Maya Chowdhry
Maya Chowdhry (born 1964) is a British playwright, poet and transmedia interactive artist.
Life
Maya Chowdhry was born in Edinburgh in 1964.{{cite book|author=Deirdre Osborne|editor=Deirdre Osborne|title=The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature (1945–2010)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iqgODQAAQBAJ&pg=PA7|year=2016|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-13924-4|page=7|chapter=Introduction}} She began writing as an adolescent:
{{blockquote|I began writing to stay above water; I wrote to survive teenage years: crushes, exams, obsessional cooking – my poetry was a life-line. When my poetry was published I was asked to read at the launch – to perform my life. It slipped easily off the tongue: I had had years of performing answers to society's questions about my identities; I had written about the questions, searching for my true identity. Readings became performances, multi-media shows, commissions. Suddenly my identity was captured, fractured, sliced and served to audiences and I was a 'live' challenge to myself.Quoted in {{cite book|editor=Lynda Hall|title=Telling Moments: Autobiographical Lesbian Short Stories|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UVY0i2iwFHwC&pg=PR17|year=2003|publisher=Terrace Books|isbn=978-0-299-19113-9|page=xvii}}}}
Chowdhry worked for Sheffield Film Co-op in the 1980s, and wrote theatre for young people in the 1990s.[https://www.peepaltreepress.com/authors/maya-chowdhry Maya Chowdhry], Peepal Tree Press. Like other black women playwrights such as Jackie Kay and Jacqueline Rudet, Chowdhry was helped by the appointment of the black woman producer Frances-Anne Solomon to BBC Radio 4.
Chowdhry's first play, Monsoon (1993), was broadcast as part of the BBC Young Playwrights' Festival.{{cite book|author=Elaine Aston|editor-link=Alison Donnell|editor=Alison Donnell|title=Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture|chapter=Chowdhry, Maya|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VfdpdZ9DwH0C&pg=PA77|year=2002|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-70025-7|page=77}} Monsoon portrays the return of sisters Jalaarnava and Kavitaa, two second-generation migrant young women, to their parents' birthplace in India.{{cite book|author=Gabriele Griffin|title=Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1UjLcYuJBqoC&pg=PA77|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-44184-1|pages=94–102}} The play parallels the experience of menstruation with waiting for the seasonal monsoon. Chowdhry's play Kaahini (1997) was toured by Red Ladder, as one of a series of plays aimed primarily at Asian-British girls. Influenced by the story of Shikhandi in the Mahabharata, the play dramatizes a gender reversal narrative: a British Indian teenage girl, Esha, is brought up by her parents as a boy. After a close friend Farooq falls in love with Esha, she reveals herself to him as a girl and is forced to work through her gender identity.{{cite book|author=Gabriele Griffin|title=Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1UjLcYuJBqoC&pg=PA132|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-44184-1|pages=132–137}}
In 2000 Chowdhry moved into digital work, and received an Arts Council Year of the Artist Award for her digital work destinyNation.
In 2015 Chowdhry collaborated with poet Sarah Hymas on "poetic sculptures" exploring the fragility of life and anthropogenic climate change.Joe Williams, [https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/11/10/art-exhibition-highlights-difficulties-facing-lgbt-south-asians-on-the-eve-of-diwali/ Art exhibition highlights difficulties facing LGBT South Asians on the eve of Diwali], Pink News, 10 November 2015. Accessed 16 August 2020.
In April 2020 Chowdhry was awarded a COVID-19 Creative Commission from Greater Manchester Combined Authority.Nigel Barlow, [https://aboutmanchester.co.uk/sixty-artists-musicians-and-other-creatives-awarded-500-each-to-help-create-greater-manchesters-covid-19-cultural-archive/ Sixty artists, musicians and other creatives awarded £500 each to help create Greater Manchester's COVID-19 cultural archive], About Manchester, 17 April 2020. Accessed 16 August 2020.
Works
=Plays=
- (with Jag Rahi Hai) Putting in the Pickle Where the Jam Should Be, Write Back, 1989.
- Monsoon. In Monsoon: Six Plays By Black & Asian Women, Aurora Metro Press, 1993.
- The Crossing Path. In New Plays for Young People, Faber and Faber, 2003.
- Kaahini. Edinburgh: Capercaillie, 2004.
=Other writing=
- Contributions in As Girls Could Boast: New Poetry by Women, 1994.
- "Living Performance". Journal of Lesbian Studies. Volume 2, 1998. {{doi |10.1300/J155v02n02_02}}
- 'Healing Strategies for Women at War', in Seven Black Women Poets, Crocus Press, 1999.
- "k/not theory; a self dialogue", Journal of Lesbian Studies. Volume 4, 2000. {{doi |10.1300/J155v04n04_05}}
- (ed. with Mary Sharratt) Bitch Lit. Manchester: Crocus, 2006.
- [http://interactiveartist.org/the-seamstress-and-the-global-garment/ The seamstress and the global garment. Manchester : Crocus debuts/Suitcase, 2009.]
- Fossil. Leeds, England: Peepal Tree, 2016.
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/writersgallery/content/Maya_Chowdhry.html Writers Gallery: Maya Chowdhry]
- [https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/dec/11/poem-of-the-week-microbial-museum-by-maya-chowdhry Poem of the week: Microbial Museum by Maya Chowdhry]
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Category:British dramatists and playwrights
Category:British Asian writers