Dipika Guha

Dipika Guha

Dipika Guha was born in Calcutta and raised in India, Russia and the United Kingdom. She is the inaugural recipient of the Shakespeare’s Sister Playwriting Fellowship, a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton and a Venturous Fellow with the Lark Play Development Center. Her plays include YOGA PLAY (South Coast Repertory Theatre, SF Playhouse, Gateway Theatre amongst others), I ENTER the...
Dipika Guha was born in Calcutta and raised in India, Russia and the United Kingdom. She is the inaugural recipient of the Shakespeare’s Sister Playwriting Fellowship, a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton and a Venturous Fellow with the Lark Play Development Center. Her plays include YOGA PLAY (South Coast Repertory Theatre, SF Playhouse, Gateway Theatre amongst others), I ENTER the VALLEY (Theatreworks New Play Festival, Finalist for the Ruby Prize ’15); THE ART of GAMAN (Theatre 503 London, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor) and UNRELIABLE (Kansas City Rep). She is currently under commission from ACT and Z Space, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep and MTC/Sloan.

Her work has been developed at theatres including the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, the Public, The Atlantic Theatre Company, the Drama League, Cutting Ball Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, New Georges, Roundabout Underground, Shotgun Players, Red Bull Theatre, Leviathan Theatre, Naked Angels, The Cherry Lane Theatre, One Coast Collaboration, The Sam French OOB Festival, The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway and the Tobacco Factory (UK) amongst others. She’s been awarded residencies at the Hermitage Artist Residency, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, SPACE at Ryder Farm, McCarter Theatre’s Sallie B.Goodman Residency, Ucross Artists Residency and the Rasmuson Foundation in Sitka, Alaska. She’s an alumnus of Ars Nova Playgroup, the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Soho Rep W/D Lab, the Women’s Project Lab & the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab.

Dipika received her BA in English Literature from University College London, was a Frank Knox Fellow at Harvard University and received her MFA in Playwriting at the Yale School of Drama under Paula Vogel. She has taught playwriting at theaters and non-profits across the country, at Bryn Mawr and Fairfield Universities, the Co-op Performing Arts High School and Young Playwrights Inc and Fellowship Place, a non-profit supporting adults with mental illness.

She's worked as Visiting Artist at the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School was a a Resident Playwright at The Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, was a Core Writer at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, a member of the Geffen Playwrights Group and is a current member of New Dramatists.

For television Dipika has written on shows like American Gods, Sneaky Pete, Black Monday, shows in development on AMC and Netflix and is currently writing for The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. She's also developing pilots with FilmNation and A24/Fruit Tree.

Despite a long run in the United States she still drinks tea.

Plays

  • In Braunau
    Inter-Racial Liberal couple Justin and Sarah move to Braunau, Austria to turn Hitler's birth house into a bed and breakfast. They are going to reclaim the space, bake cookies and make it welcoming for everyone. And I mean everyone. IN BRAUNAU is a dark comedy about good intentions and the nature of evil.
  • YOGA PLAY (Kilroy List 2017)
    Yoga apparel giant Jojomon are at the top of their game when a terrible scandal sends them into freefall. Newly hired CEO Joan stakes everything on a wild plan to recover their earnings and their reputation. YOGA PLAY is a comedy about enlightenment in a world determined to sell it.
  • Unreliable (KILROY LIST 2017)
    Gretchen is a lawyer. Yusuf is her client. Yusuf is being held indefinitely without trial for terrorism. Hattie is Gretchen’s mother. Only...Hattie thinks Gretchen is a secretary. And Gretchen knows Hattie is sick. And Yusuf says he’s been framed. In a world full of fake news and indefinite access to information, Unreliable traces the consequences of living in a story of your choosing.
  • THE ART of GAMAN
    When Tomomi’s steamer pulls into San Francisco, her arrival coincides with the first wave of west coast Japanese internment. So when an old man on board offers to arrange her marriage to his son who lives in New York, Tomomi knows she must accept. Funny, intimate and deeply theatrical, THE ART of GAMAN is an account of one woman’s journey towards independence and self-expression through her life and American history.
  • PASSING (2M, 3W)
    On an imagined island, ill-matched, British expats Clara and Sidney live isolated from the indiginous population. That is, until a young girl, bloody and brutalised appears on their property. PASSING is a poetic and impressionistic confrontation with the history of colonialism, chronicling a history that resists erasure.
  • BLOWN YOUTH (7W)
    All Celia wants is to play a great role. But unlike Hamlet, there isn’t one for her to inherit. Despite her sophisticated education and a profound intellectual commitment to helping other women somehow Celia, like her counterpart, cannot act. Still, it seems that her consciousness doesn’t only lie inside her. It seeds and sprouts amidst her twenty first century kinships: her friends.
    Inspired by...
    All Celia wants is to play a great role. But unlike Hamlet, there isn’t one for her to inherit. Despite her sophisticated education and a profound intellectual commitment to helping other women somehow Celia, like her counterpart, cannot act. Still, it seems that her consciousness doesn’t only lie inside her. It seeds and sprouts amidst her twenty first century kinships: her friends.
    Inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Blown Youth asks what happens to the universe if a woman is at its center.
  • THE BETROTHED
    Simon leaves America for the first time to fly to the Old Country to marry the woman he’s been betrothed to from birth. On arrival he finds that she is ancient. She insists that she IS his betrothed, his only love and that she aged overnight due to the stress of his anticipated arrival. Horrified by her age and her abundant sexual interest in him, he kills her. THE BETROTHED is a comic exploration of gender,...
    Simon leaves America for the first time to fly to the Old Country to marry the woman he’s been betrothed to from birth. On arrival he finds that she is ancient. She insists that she IS his betrothed, his only love and that she aged overnight due to the stress of his anticipated arrival. Horrified by her age and her abundant sexual interest in him, he kills her. THE BETROTHED is a comic exploration of gender, sexuality and national identity.
  • I Enter the Valley (4W, 2M)
    Beloved national poet Augusto Reál has not written a scrap for seven years. What’s more, he’s been incredibly happy. Or has he? In the twilight of his life, his once quiet house is flooded with the voices of women who descend upon the valley. They upset him, shatter his peace and in the noise something unspoken begins to stir in them all.
    I ENTER the VALLEY is a play about the nature of power,...
    Beloved national poet Augusto Reál has not written a scrap for seven years. What’s more, he’s been incredibly happy. Or has he? In the twilight of his life, his once quiet house is flooded with the voices of women who descend upon the valley. They upset him, shatter his peace and in the noise something unspoken begins to stir in them all.
    I ENTER the VALLEY is a play about the nature of power, creativity and female friendship. It was inspired by the life of Pablo Neruda.
  • THE RULES (3W, 1M)
    Ana has a loving relationship with her childhood friends Julia and Mehr. That is, until a brooding stranger named Valmont with a mysterious resemblance to Colin Firth and a strange addiction problem comes to town. Now Ana must examine the unwritten rules of their friendship and the near invisible laws that govern how the women see themselves. THE RULES is a late coming of age story.