Rani Moorthy is an Artistic Director of Rasa, which celebrates the migrant experience through powerful theatre. She has written 12 plays for Rasa. ‘Pooja’ had 3 national tours in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. ‘Curry Tales’ at Traverse Theatre (2004) toured 80 venues nationally and then South Africa, USA, Zimbabwe, Mauritius and Singapore. It was nominated for a MEN Award for Best Fringe Performance. ‘Too Close to Home’ was nominated for the MEN Best New Play Award. ‘Looking for Kool’ was part of the Alchemy Festival at the Southbank Centre. ‘States of Verbal Undress’ (2014) was a finalist in the Asian Media Awards. ‘Whose Sari Now?’ has toured in 2015 and 2016.
1) Which place, or city or country do you most feel at home in?
I am a migrant born in Malaysia to a Sri Lankan Tamil family, educated in Singapore and now I live in Manchester. So my concept of home is only informed by a group of loving people who have cooked great food for each other and have stories to tell and retell.
2) What are your proudest achievements?
A play I wrote called ‘Pooja’ was picked up by the British Council at the Edinburgh Fringe to tour Sri Lanka during a narrow window of peace in the North in 2003. I was the first Tamil artist to perform in Jaffna in 20 years.
I was invited to perform my one woman show “Curry Tales” at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, the place where anti-apartheid activists and artists like Athol Fugard and John Kani created historic theatre.
3) What inspires you?
Creating extraordinary characters from stories gathered from apparently ordinary lives.
4) What has been biggest obstacle in your career?
Myself. As a South Asian, a career in the arts isn’t a valued path in life. As an Asian woman, the arts is at best a hobby or usually a faded dream. It took me a long time to call myself an artist even though I was earning a living. I was an academic for a while teaching theatre, being a shadow artist. Everyday I grapple with the censor and naysayer in my head. Conquer that and all the other perceived obstacles, lack of opportunity, racism, misogyny, the whole list, just seem to fall away.
5) Who has been the biggest influence on your career to date?
My father, who told me stories, opened my mind to George Orwell and Jazz. He never doubted that I could rule the world and was always shocked at my lack of self-confidence. There is a part of him in everything I write.
6) What is the best aspect about your current role?
In ‘Handlooms’, I play an Indian mother who wants to take the Sari business into mass production, online sales and couture. It hopefully upends the usual stereotypes of Asian mothers. She is funny and powerful like most Asian women I know.
7) And the worst?
As Writer and Artistic Director of my Theatre Company of ‘Handlooms’ set in a working Sari shop Alankar in Manchester and Anokhi in Leicester, there is the usual fear of the huge risk as an Independent Theatre Company.
8) What are your long term goals?
My long term goal is to keep being a creative person.
9) If you were Prime Minister, what one aspect would you change?
To find a way to keep and improve the NHS.
10) If you were marooned on a desert island, which historical figure would you like to spend your time with and why.
The writer and thinker James Baldwin who will always be ready with good Scotch, good stories and make me see the world in a fresh, enlightened way.
