Souradeep Roy

Profile

My academic interests lie in theatre historiography, political economy, social reproduction, translation and material modernisms. In my current PhD research at Queen Mary under the supervision of Dr Nicholas Ridout I am writing a history of the Bengali group theatre movement and the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association centred around Calcutta (now Kolkata) from the 1940s to the 1970s. My previous M Phil dissertations were on the Bengali actress and writer Keya Chakraborty and the English poet Adil Jussawalla. In the former, carried out at Jawaharlal Nehru University under the supervision of Dr Bishnupriya Dutt, I tried to find a method for a possible feminist historiography of the Bengali group theatre movement, and, in the latter, I worked under Dr Rimli Bhattacharya at the University of Delhi to make a case for material modernism in Indian English poetry by reading Jussawalla’s poem, “Missing Person”.

I am also a poet, translator and playwright and theatre director. In my theatre practice I am trying to find a language for postdramatic and other experimental performance practices for the South Asian context. My work-in-progress, How to Make Rice, will premiere in A Season of Bangla Drama 2022 festival in London.

I have previously worked for organisations such as the Indian Writers’ Forum, Tricontinental Institute of Social Research, and at Ashoka University, Sonipat. I am also an Associate Editor at Almost Island, an international journal of literature based in India. 

Teaching

I am teaching, and have taught Power Plays, a first year joint practical module. I try to incorporate my own training under the Bengali theatre director, playwright and actor Ramaprasad Banik in my class.

Research

Publications

Academic:

“Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, Nandikar, and the World: Staging World Literature in Bengali”. South Asian Review, 41:3-4, 316-335 (2020).

with Senjuti Chakrabarti, “Introduction: A Writing Pedagogy of Failure”. Sanglap: Journal of
Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 7:1, 01-27 (2020).

Creative Writing:

A Brief Loss of Sanity: A Radio Play in Verse and Prose

It will come back: an elegy

Journalism:

Rupi Kaur’s bad poems shouldn’t worry us – the myopic view of the literary establishment should

Why this book on Safdar Hashmi’s death and life is a great start for the history of street theatre