NLSIU grad Aditya Sudarshan wins the MetroPlus Playwright Award 2011

Aditya Sudarshan, a 2007 batch graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) has won the MetroPlus Playwright Award 2011 for his playscript ‘The Green Room’..Aditya Sudarshan (pictured), a 2007 batch graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) has won the MetroPlus Playwright Award 2011 for his playscript ‘The Green Room’..The Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award 2011 carries a prize of Rs.1 lakh for the best original unpublished and unperformed playscript in English..Aditya speaking to Bar & Bench on winning the award said, “It’s very encouraging for me, especially since I have come to play-writing from prose and not from a theatrical background. So it’s reassurance for me that I can work in this form too”..Aditya initially worked with criminal lawyer Siddharth Agarwal after graduating from NLSIU. He quit practicing law in 2008 and focused only on his writing..Aditya has penned down two novels, ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ and ‘Show Me A Hero’. He has also contributed several short stories to anthologies and magazines. He is also the author of a full-length play Sensible People..The Green Room was selected from 117 entries received from all over the country. Out of 117, finally three were short-listed. The other two short-listed entries were Swetanshu Bora’s Once, On That Street and Abhishek Majumdar’s The Djinns of Eidgah..Describing the playscript, Aditya said, “The play is a love triangle involving an actress, her manager and boyfriend, and a fan from her audience. The theme of the play is the predicament of English-speaking, English-educated artists working in India- the questions of cultural legitimacy and relevance that inhibit them, and their struggles to reconcile their dreams with their circumstances. It’s about different ways of seeing these issues”..The scripts were judged by a panel of three eminent persons engaged in world of theatre. The three jurists were Arshia Sattar, an independent scholar, translator and teacher and Director of the Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival 2005; Keval Arora, who teaches literature and drama in Delhi and is a distinguished theatre critic; and Shernaz Patel, a well-known Mumbai-based actress in theatre, television and film..The judges described ‘The Green Room’ as a strong and direct playscript.