Ursula Rani Sarma's visit to "Irish Theatre Today" by Theresa Nguyen

Ursula Rani Sarma in conversation with the class. 

            Our class had the exciting opportunity to meet Ursula Rani Sarma, a contemporary half-Indian/half-Irish playwright known for writing “Blue” and “The Magic Tree” among many other works. During the informal talk, she told us about her background as a playwright, the process she undertook to write and direct her own plays, as well as the struggles and “feeling” of making a career out of this art form.

For the most part, Ursula loves being a playwright and has had great success with it. Though she began writing plays since the age of three, she never dreamed of having her plays realized on stage until her undergraduate years in University College Cork, where she began directing after having a horrible experience as an actor in a student play. For her, being able to see and control all the relationships on stage was more interesting and exciting than being an actor who was “continually blinded by the spotlight.” As a playwright, Ursula explains that she also has the power to redefine parts of the play, especially when the plot fails to reach a natural arc for some reason or another during the rehearsal process. Of course she inevitably gets annoyed with actors that have either altered a character or played a character poorly; however, she finds the process of being able to sit and collaborate with them as they read over the play during the first week of rehearsal worthwhile.

Excited applause for our guest. 

Given her interesting background, we asked her about issues that touched upon race, gender, and teenage delinquency in Ireland. As an Irish native and one who looks more Irish than Indian, Ursula claims to have never personally experienced any racism growing up in Co Clare, a small town like many others that did not experience modernization until the late ‘90s. Though she admits that Ireland is conservative and generally homogenous, she does not believe that the Irish are “inherently racist,” at least for her generation. For instance, whenever she reveals half-Indian background, the general response would be that of interest rather than alienation. In her opinion, a racist comment was more of a reflection of being misunderstood as an Irishman. And it is this characteristic feeling of estrangement in Ireland that Ursula often times explore in her work. In her play, “Blue,” for example, teenagers experience the devastating, escapist effects of drug abuse. Growing up, Ursula observed that every teenager, including herself, wanted to leave his hometown, and this general desire is what Ursula suspected made drug addiction a sudden and recent problem in Ireland today. In that very same play, Ursula also experiments with androgyny and does not let the readers know that one of the main characters, Danny, is female until much later. Here, the juxtaposition of a tomboy and the notion of being female challenges the lifestyle of a country that still values domesticity. Overall, her plays reflect the Irish culture, from the portrayal of romantic landscapes to the conflicting, private-home issues that pervade Ireland.

Ursula’s writing style is unique. Her beautiful writing is lyrical and seemingly unstructured, almost experimental. When asked about the process of writing such plays, Ursula reveals that it often times begins with asking “Why?” This questioning, she notes, was especially most effective after having observed a particular detail, such as a group of teenagers talking among themselves in a café. She also explains that writing begins with a voice and the finish product with a vision. Unlike a novelist, she cannot describe the visual aspects of her story and so would have to already visualize the circumstances of which the dialogue took place in her play. As a writer, her biggest challenge is to accept the idea of “letting go.” Though she is constantly tempted to edit and rewrite her plays, she ultimately discovers that to get anything done, she must finish and move on. What is most important to her, she realizes, is challenging herself and taking on new ideas. In the end, she does not care how polished a piece is or how much acclaim it gets, but rather on the amount of risk she has taken to write and produce the play (as of now, that play for her is the “The Magic Tree”).

As a female playwright, Ursula is aware that her industry is pre-dominantly male. However, she notes that every major industry is. She, herself, was never intimidated by the poor female-male ratio; she was successful not only because she wrote good plays, but also because she knocked on people’s doors to have her plays produced. When our class asked for advice on being a successful actor, she commented that it ultimately came down to taking initiative. In other words, if she produced her own plays to get her name out there, why not create a one-man or one-woman show to do the same? At the end, this was her advice to us as well as inspiring writers and artists, just do it, and do it yourself.

Ursula and class.