Tanika Gupta was born in 1963 in Chiswick, and studied Modern History at Oxford. Her mother was a classical Indian dancer and her father a singer. She wrote many stories as a child, was a community worker for some years, and settled into playwriting in her late 20s. She has written for film, theater, radio and television. Her work includes Hobson's Choice, set in an Indian tailor shop in Lancashire, and Gladiator Games, about the racist murder of Zahid Mubarak in a juvenile British prison, but she has generally resisted being classified as an "Asian woman playwright".
Her latest play, Sugar Mummies, is set among white women who travel to Jamaican beach resorts in search of sex with local Jamaican men. The play examines the mutual exploitation and racial stereotypes: young men who sell their bodies for food, who call the white tourists "milk bottles", and women who objectify and purchase black men. The Guardian describes it as 'clear, no-nonsense".
- Newsclips & Links
- Write about an arranged marriage? No way. Lynn Gardner interviews Tanika Gupta in the Guardian.
- Sex, sand and sugar mummies in a Caribbean beach fantasy. The Guardian.
- Interview by Sue Higginson on the National Theatre website, about The Waiting Room.
- Interview about Inside Out on the BBC website.
