Anusree Roy Writes in Service of the Story
About This Episode
In this episode of Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby speaks with acclaimed playwright, actor, and screenwriter Anusree Roy about her newest play, Through the Eyes of God, now onstage at Theatre Passe-Muraille. The conversation explores Roy’s evolving artistic process, the deeply personal roots of her storytelling, and her journey between theatre and television writing.
In this episode:
- Writing as an act of witnessing and responsibility
- The emotional and ethical weight of socially engaged theatre
- Navigating the Canadian theatre landscape as a playwright of colour
- Collaboration, trust, and the rehearsal room as community
- Sustaining an artistic life while carrying urgent stories
- And much more!
Guest: 🎭 Anusree Roy
Anusree is a two time Governor General’s Award-nominated and four-time Dora Award-winning writer, actor, and director.
Anusree is currently the Co-Executive Producer and writer for the Allegiance S3 (CBC) television series. She has also worked on Interview With The Vampire S3 (AMC), Allegiance S2 (CBC), Transplant S2 (NBC/Netflix/CTV), I Woke Up a Vampire (Netflix), SkyMed (Paramount+/CBC), Remedy (Global TV), Killjoys (SyFy), and Nurses S1 & S2 (NBC/Global TV).
For theatre, Anusree’s plays include: Through the Eyes of God, Sisters, Trident Moon, Little Pretty and The Exceptional, Sultans of the Street, Brothel # 9, Roshni, Letters to my Grandma, and Pyaasa. She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award, the RBC Emerging Artist Award, the Carol Bolt Award and the Siminovitch Protégé Prize. She was the 2018 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (the largest and oldest playwriting prize for women writing for English-speaking theatre). Currently, she is the commissioned playwright at Tarragon Theatre, writing her new play, 147, 8th Street. Anusree is presently developing a feature film inspired by her audio play, Sisters, as well as directing and premiering her short films, The Birthday Party and God’s Plan (winner of Best Performance & Best Editing at WIFF). She is also an adjunct professor of playwriting at the University of Toronto and a professor of creative writing, teaching advanced drama to MFA students, at the University of British Columbia.
Anusree’s playwright residencies include: Nightwood Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Factory Theatre, The Blyth Festival, Theatre Passe Muraille, The Canadian Stage Company and Tarragon Theatre. Anusree spent two seasons as an actor at the Stratford Festival of Canada. She holds a B.A. from York University and an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and most of her plays have been published by Playwrights Canada Press. Anusree was a board member for Playwrights Canada Press for over five years and a juror for the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Michael Than Foundation Award, Toronto Arts Foundation Awards and the George Luscombe Mentorship Award. Her works have appeared in multiple anthologies including: Refractions: Scenes, Refractions: Solo, Love, Loss and Longing: South Asian Canadian Plays, Truth in Play, Dramathemes, TOK: Writing the New Toronto, and Diaspora Dialogues Anthology. Anusree’s plays have been taught at the University of Toronto, York University, Ryerson University, Wilfried Laurier University, the University of Calgary, the University of Guelph, the University of Regina, McGill University and the National Theatre School.
Connect with Anusree
🌐 Website: http://www.anusreeroy.com
📸 Instagram: @writeranusreeroy
Support Stageworthy:
If you love the show, consider supporting on Patreon: patreon.com/stageworthy
Patrons get early access to episodes, participate in conversations about topics to cover, and more.
With three backer levels: $2, $7, and $20.
Subscribe & Follow:
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podchaser | Amazon Music | iHeart Radio
📺 Watch on YouTube – Like, subscribe & hit the notification bell!
Transcript
[Phil Rickaby]
Welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast.
And on this podcast, I talk to Canadians who make theatre, whether they are playwrights, actors, directors, producers. If they’re making theatre, I talk to them. Some of the people I talk to are household names, and the rest are people I really think you should get to know.
I’m going to get into who my guest is this week in just one moment. But first, let’s take care of a little bit of housekeeping. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure that you like this episode, leave a comment.
So let me know that you were here. And if you like what you’ve been seeing, if you want to help support the channel, that way hit the subscribe button, make sure that you hit the bell icon so that whenever a new episode drops, you will get notified that a new episode is available. If you’re listening to the audio version, make sure that you are subscribed, go to your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy and hit the follow button.
That way, whenever a new episode is released, it will download directly to your device and you won’t have to do a single thing. If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, do me a favour, if you could leave a review and a rating, that would be super helpful. I don’t know if you know this, but when you leave reviews and ratings, the algorithm picks those up and helps to bump up podcasts in the algorithm so that they present them to more people.
And so by doing that, you’ll be helping to spread the word and tell more people about Stageworthy. A couple of other things, I do have a Patreon, I’ll get into some details at the end of the show when I talk about who’s on the podcast next week. But if you want to be one of the people who helps me to make this show, go to patreon.com slash Stageworthy and become a patron. My guest this week is Anusree Roy. Anusree is an acclaimed and award winning playwright, actor and screenwriter. Anusree joined me to talk about her writing process and also, Through the Eyes of God, her latest play, which is on now at Theatre Passe-Muraille.
Now here’s my conversation with Anusree Roy. Anusree, thank you so much for joining me. We’re here to talk about your new play at Theatre Passe-Muraille.
Could you give us a bit of a, I guess, an elevator pitch for Through the Eyes of God?
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, Through the Eyes of God is my brand new play, which is a sequel to my very first play I wrote 20 years ago. And the name of that play is Pyaasa. So Through the Eyes of God is a sequel to Pyaasa.
And the character that we meet in Pyaasa, Chaya, who’s the central character of Pyaasa, she’s now a bit older. She’s 22 years old and a mom herself. And in Through the Eyes of God, we follow her.
And essentially, Through the Eyes of God is a story about a mother’s desperate attempts to get their child back. And the child has been kidnapped. And essentially, it’s how far is a mother willing to go to do what is necessary to get the child that she loves back.
And the audience kind of watches right from the beginning to see if she can achieve the goal that she sets out for herself to achieve it by the end of the play.
[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned that we’re revisiting Chaya’s story from Pyaasa. And that was, I guess, almost two decades ago that the first play came out. Is there something that called to you to make you want to revisit Chaya again?
[Anusree Roy]
No, to be honest, not at all. In fact, when I started writing this play, I wrote it as an independent play that had nothing to do with the first play. The material wasn’t different, but it was written for a different character in mind.
It was about this mother who was in search of her daughter. And it was a very kind of organic, organic process. And at the end of writing this play that was in development for a few years, I started to get these very visceral dreams and very visceral kind of gut feeling that this new play that I wrote, Through the Eyes of God, belonged to part one.
And for context, I’m like a very organized writer. I’m not chaotic energy. I’m not this belongs here, move that here.
I’m doing this for two decades, I have a very kind of patented kind of process, which is very organized and meticulous. And it’s a way kind of I like doing my things a certain way. And so to me, I was like, what do you mean this, I was getting these dreams, these feelings, that this play belongs to part one, and I thought it can’t be like there’s no way.
So then I sat with part one, because, you know, as an artist, as as somebody who is in service of the art, and not myself, I have to follow those nudges, I have to follow those feelings, I have to follow the reality of where my show is, you know, my stories want to take me. And I revisited part one. And I thought, yep, I can see why this is so.
So I sat down to do revisions, and kind of really see what the show wanted it to be, how the story wanted to come. And then I called my director, and then my producer, and then the actor to tell them, you know, kind of, this is where I’m at. And this is what’s happening.
And they were incredibly supportive. And then I did revisions again, and kind of we did some more workshops. And I, you know, really sat with both plays to find where essentially the stories meet, and why it was important for the play to be connected to the first one.
So that’s how the sequel came about. And I actually do think it’s a wonderful story for the play out there. And I’m, you know, waiting to receive it from the universe.
[Phil Rickaby]
That’s fascinating, because, you know, having having not considered the possibility of the there being like a duology, now thinking of it as a trilogy, this is quite a change. What was it about the story of Through the Eyes of God that made you feel like it, it did belong to Chaya? What was it about, about her story that it needed to be the continuation?
[Anusree Roy]
It wasn’t, it wasn’t anything that made me feel it belonged to Chaya. I just started to get these very strong feelings whenever and dreams and visions. Whenever I sat with the play, it wasn’t my doing at all.
I wasn’t sitting there going, I think this needs to be a part one, it just, you know, I suddenly started to get these dreams at night, or when I would sit with the play, I started to get this, you know, or go for walks, I started to get this very strong feeling that this play actually belongs to part one. And that’s something, you know, I always say, as an artist, you are, if you really are an artist, you are in service of the art, not yourself. And when a piece of music or a piece of story or a piece of, you know, anything that you’re working on film or anything demands you to revisit something, for a reason beyond your understanding, you have to sit down and do the work.
And that’s exactly what happened.
[Phil Rickaby]
It sounds like like this, this, it like it was a real process to to do that. To get to that point, who was more resistant to the idea? Was it you?
Was it the producer, director? What, what, what was the process of changing this from something that was unconnected to part one, to something that was a continuation? What was that process both, you know, at least, not just from the writing of it, but like from the production of it?
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, I think I was more resistant than anybody else, because I knew that the play I had written was working. And I did not want to go in there and mess it up, you know. And so I was like, Oh, my God, if I started these revisions, I got to add all of these other things to link it to part one.
And what if then it doesn’t work? But I, as again, somebody who’s in service of their art, I know better than to say no to something, when it’s coming in the form of visions. And you know, these whispers and showing up in my prayer and my dreams.
So I knew that it would, it would work because it wasn’t me manufacturing something, it was something that was organically coming to me. I was quite resistant. And I was very hesitant in my conversations with my director.
And I kept saying, you know, I don’t want to mess up something that I know is working. We had done multiple workshops by that time. And I knew that the story as, as it stood on its own was working.
So I don’t want to kind of get in there. I don’t want to get in there and mess it up. And my director, my producer, my actor, they were incredibly supportive.
And their, their vision was always to be in service of whatever I wanted it to be, you know. And the moment I called them, and I said, this is a sequel instant, they were like, absolutely, yes, yes, whatever you need. How can we help?
What do you need? What do you need? So that was great.
And they were like, let’s do a couple of more workshops. Let’s let you know, once you hand, hand your revisions in, want you to be able to hear it. Let’s do another workshop.
What else do you need? So I felt very supported by the team.
[Phil Rickaby]
Did it need much more workshopping? Or was it very close by the time you got to this point?
[Anusree Roy]
It needed it in the sense that it yes and no. Yes, in the sense that, you know, whenever you’re changing anything to a script, especially something that was quite locked in right from the beginning, you want to hear it, you want to hear where it’s flowing, you want to hear what’s working, you want to hear what’s not working. And especially in an industry, Roy script, paces, everything, my, my shows are highly, you know, choreographed with pace in the sense that my characters are very unsentimental, they’re, they’re in their own pace, and they’re speaking in their own pace, when you’re adding additional plot points, I didn’t want anything to slow it down, you know, so to have another workshop, to be able to hear it was very helpful. And to kind of see where it was landing was super, super helpful. So I’m grateful for that.
[Phil Rickaby]
When somebody is coming to see this show, if they if they have not seen the first play, are they at a disadvantage? Is there or is it just like you would if you had seen the first play, you would understand a bit more nuance?
[Anusree Roy]
I think, you know, one of the things that’s really effective about the show is it is a standalone play. And it was really important to me that it remain a standalone playing. Because what I don’t want to happen is audiences that haven’t seen Pyaasa from 20 years ago, not understanding what’s going on.
I wanted the audience to really experience through the eyes of God as a standalone show. And anything that’s referencing what came before is only in relation to where the character stands now, you know, so it isn’t a audience getting confused, not sure what the backstory is, none of those things are true. So I’m grateful that through the eyes of God is a standalone play.
And I’m grateful that, you know, even though it belongs to it, it’s right in the middle of a trilogy, it still serves the purpose that if you only want to produce through the eyes of God, and not what came before what came after, you can still do it. And it works as a standalone show.
[Phil Rickaby]
Now this sense that it is a trilogy, this feeling that sort of like in the back of your heart, almost. Do you have a sense of what that is yet? Or will Chaya tell you?
[Anusree Roy]
Chaya will for sure tell me. So I am, I am absolutely staying out of the way, as I always do with my work with my plays. You know, I’m absolutely staying out of the way I, you know, when it’ll come, it’ll come.
And everybody’s been joking in the theatre, saying to me, Oh, my God, please don’t tell us it’s gonna be 20 more years for you to write, for you to write the third part. I mean, you know, and I know they’re joking. But my honest answer is, if it is, it is, you know, I will, I have, I’m historically known to never get in the way of my plays.
I’m very stubborn about that. But I do have an ending in mind that I do think is the ending. I don’t know if that is what it will stay as or if that’s what Chaya wants the show to be.
I don’t know, it’s her life story that’s being written through me. So I’m most definitely in service of her story than I am in service of writing a new play. So, so yeah, so I think Chaya will tell me when it’s time, it’s time.
And if it honestly does take another 20 years for it to arrive, it, you know, so be it. If it’s next year, it’ll be next year. And I don’t ever, I don’t rush these things, you know, like it’s not a television show.
I’m not on a made up deadline, because there’s press out there, or you’re trying to hit the next season. I’m not like, there’s no way, you know, right. So, so it is what it is.
And until it comes, I’m just going to be sitting here, being in service and being available.
[Phil Rickaby]
Now, you mentioned staying out of the way of your plays and not, not, not getting in the way. That, I think, is one of those, one of those things that can be difficult for a playwright, sometimes. Some playwrights have a better time of it than others.
Is that something that you came to on your own? Or was that something you had to practice doing?
[Anusree Roy]
I think I’ve always been that way, if I’m being really honest. I knew when I was five years old, what I wanted to be. My earliest memory of, you know, my work is linked to when I was five.
And I knew who I was, I knew what I wanted to be, I knew what I would be, I knew I would be an artist, I knew I would be exactly the kind of art that I’m doing right now. I’ve always had a very strong awareness of my own identity, in relationship to my art. And I’ve always just known that I’m, I am in service of, I’m channeling, I’m listening, I’m writing.
My, I pray a lot when I write, I walk around, I ask the characters what they want to be, I ask the characters who they are, I, it’s, it’s just, it really is, like, I’m, I’ve heard of musicians say that, where they like sit and wait for the music to come and they write it down. And that’s exactly my process with writing. You know, I have done that with every single thing that I have done, as I really try not to get in the way.
And I don’t manufacture things for the sake of it. It’s very rare, very rare. I’ve done it once in a while, where after a whole thing has finished, everything, and in production, I’ve changed, like, I did it for Trident Moon, where, you know, after production, in the publication draft, I, the do that at all.
It’s just not who I am when I’m writing the play. Production and publication are different things than when you’re actually writing what the character wants you to write, you know, and it’s a responsibility, I feel. And I think because I always knew I was privileged to be an artist, I was always, I always knew that what I received from God is, I didn’t, you know, I didn’t earn my talent.
It was given to me. What I did earn is my skill set of polishing it and showing up with humility and doing the work. I’m very disciplined.
So that’s my part. But to be a writer is not earned. I didn’t earn it.
Like, sure, I went to school and all those things, but it was given to me. So as a caretaker of the work, I have to be in service.
[Phil Rickaby]
I want to ask you about the change to Trident Moon, which we will come to in a second. But did those two jokes that you wanted to rewrite, was that just from repetition of hearing the jokes and realizing in performance that they needed to punch up? Or what happened there?
Since it’s something that you don’t usually do, I’m very curious.
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. When I was on, you know, on stage with the show, I remember thinking, oh, this, this actually could be better, you know. But I had already met the audience and I wasn’t gonna change the jokes, obviously, after we opened.
But I remember thinking, oh, it could actually be better if it was XYZ, you know. So in publication, I thought if I changed two jokes, where I made it more, like, funnier, and I made it more kind of in service of the character. And those are the only two things I changed after the fact.
[Phil Rickaby]
Jokes can be very important. They can be the thing that releases the tension that an audience is feeling. And in a play like Trident Moon, which is a political thriller set during India’s partition, which is a very tense and it’s sometimes brutal story, you would need the jokes to be, to really diffuse that tension.
Now, that story of Trident Moon, of dealing with that time of partition, was that something that that you had wanted, a story that you wanted to tell for a long time? Or was it something that you shied away from? Because I know some families, my girlfriend’s family has roots in India, and her family almost never discussed partition.
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, I was raised by war survivors. My father’s side survived World War II, and my mother’s side, partition. And I mean, everybody survived all of those things.
But what I mean by that is to say that they were impacted by it quite a lot. And I was raised in a household where we talked about World War II and the partition. As dinner table conversations, it was very steeped in my reality.
I grew up hearing about all of it as from a very young age. So I always knew. And, you know, if you look through all my work, there’s a read, read my plays or see them.
There’s a lot of talk about the war letters to my grandma was inspired by World War II and the partition. So so I’ve always discussed it. So it wasn’t kind of a novelty thing that I was saving to talk about.
And it never felt to me something that Oh, you know, it’s some really important. It felt like it’s who I am. It’s an extension of who I am.
It’s an extension of things I want to talk about. So it didn’t feel as like a separate thing that I was saving to talk about. It’s seeped in my work in many different instances.
And I’ve talked a lot about it, you know, in context, many, many, many, many times. So it was only natural that eventually I would one day write write about it.
[Phil Rickaby]
You mentioned just a little while ago, you talked about how you knew what you wanted to do from a very young age. Yeah. How did that come about?
A lot of a lot of some people know, like from a very early age that they want to be in theatre, they want to be a playwright, they want to be an actor or something like that. But others don’t. Some people need to be exposed to it.
How did you first come to the realization that this was something you wanted to do?
[Anusree Roy]
My earliest awareness of it was being in a family that really encouraged me telling stories. My uncle in Kolkata, his name is Mr. Amit Roy. He is a actor.
He is a voice artist. And he worked a lot in the All India Radio, which is our kind of national radio. And so him being an actor in the family, a performer, a writer, a radio artist, it was very, very natural for my whole family kind of getting behind me and supporting me when I came to the realization that’s what I wanted to do as well.
And he was my early kind of mentor slash teacher. You know, I remember doing commercials with him. I remember doing stage plays written by him and or written by other people that I was starring in.
And he would coach me my monologues, he would coach my scenes, and he would really sit with me. And one of my earliest, earliest memory, I don’t know how old I was 10, 11, maybe I don’t know, I was really, really young. And I was up for a role.
And I had a big monologue that my uncle and I sat down at our downstairs, we had, we had this little office room. And we were just working on the monologue. And I remember him coaching me and him saying to me, if you want to have a career, inspiration doesn’t mean anything.
It’s just discipline. Discipline is where you have a sustained career. And I remember coming upstairs with him to the whole family living in a huge, you know, family, huge family, nine, eight, nine people at all times.
And him telling everybody at the dinner table, she’s really, really good. And everybody just believing him and going, Oh, that’s amazing. And then we like ate our dinner.
And that as a young child has a really strong impression, you know, where you just believe somebody when they tell you that because you’re so young. And that started this whole thing in my family where everybody cared about my career success, everybody wanted got behind it, you know, I did everything to root for me. And, you know, through the multiple, multiple failures, it just the the the kind of true north was always do the work.
If you’re disciplined, the work will always be there for you. And that that is truly that still the guiding post, you know, whenever I fail, or I succeed, it’s still the guiding post. It’s still my true north, which is, if I show up in service of the work and disciplined, it’ll work out for me and what I want to do.
So still the case.
[Phil Rickaby]
I think I think it’s interesting. You talk about the about about failures, about about having to work, I think we don’t talk enough about failure, and its importance, how you can learn from failure, how you can become better by failing. And I think there’s a lot of people who are so afraid to fail that they don’t do anything, not realizing that it’s the thing that will get them to the next level.
It’s the thing that will teach them the important lessons. And for yourself, I mean, having already been told and had like the backing of your family, do you have a recollection of of how you first started to deal with failure?
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, I my initial rush with failure, that was simply a huge part of my life was I’m dyslexic. And I, as a writer, being dyslexic is kind of very ironic. And I grew up with the undiagnosed learning disability in India.
And I had a very, very, very tough time. In the school that I was in, I failed. Constantly, I failed.
You know, consistently so many subjects that I ended up failing grade eight and had to repeat that, which was one of the most profoundly humiliating period of my life as a young adult. I’m not an adult, actually, as a young child, it was really humiliating to not continue on to grade nine to stay back in grade eight, repeat the entire year. Dyslexia plagued me, crippled me to not be able to read.
You know, I used to feel like an illiterate because I couldn’t read. I couldn’t read a sentence because so crippled by dyslexia. And not knowing what it is, never diagnosed dyslexic in India, never even nobody ever stopped to consider what’s wrong with me.
Why can’t I read? Why can’t I spell? And it was just so much pressure to like, do better, do better, do better, pass the grade.
And the teachers were just so horrific. And I really, really struggled. And I think failing grade eight was one of those devastating things that can happen to a young person who can’t read.
So because I think I faced early and consistent challenges that didn’t relent up until I moved to Canada when I was 17 and I went to a school here that was so relaxed and that was so kind of. You know, so I joined the drama class and then I thrived. I did English.
I thrived. I just started to do things that were of interest to me versus being forced to do trigonometry, you know, and then realizing how bad my dyslexia was and then going to university and really, really doing things that interested me and that I thrived in, which is drama, doing my bachelor’s, then doing my master’s. And again, like, you know, for a kid who’s failing to go on to do their master’s is unbelievable.
Like if you told little Anushree that this would be her life, I wouldn’t be surprised that I was an actor and writer, but I would be surprised that I got a master’s, you know, because school was so hard and horrific and abusive. So that turning point for me, I think because failure had always been such a big part of my life, I had become friends with it. And so I have always had profound gratitude for the success I’ve achieved because I knew that I knew the cost.
I knew I knew what it cost me, you know, to have the success I have today. And I knew that I could never take it for granted, you know.
[Phil Rickaby]
When did the dyslexia get diagnosed for you?
[Anusree Roy]
Never. It’s never. I’ve never had a diagnosis.
All I know is, you know, D is a B and Y is upside down and A is upside down. It’s just every letter was just a different shape. And I would always say to my mom, the words are dancing on the page.
And I couldn’t read because they looked like blocks of letters, like literally looked like I couldn’t spell words because they were just blocks that I couldn’t push through, you know. And I realized that I was dyslexic when I came to Canada and I started to really investigate what is going on. Like, why am I not able to put words together?
You know, what was going, why is spelling so hard? And it was only when I came to Canada that I had the awareness of what was going on.
[Phil Rickaby]
Learning disabilities are so hard. I mean, I grew up, you know, I was in public school in the 70s and I had a math problem. And I spent ages believing that I was just dumb.
And then later on, I was diagnosed with something called a math perception problem, but it didn’t have a name. And it wasn’t until I heard and only recently that there is an actual name for it called dyscalculia, which something made me feel like, oh, OK, this is an actual thing. It’s not just me.
But having grown up in the time that I was in school and there is no real support for that, except. That people just think you have to work harder at math, much like you were told to do with with English, I think that it could be a real. It could be it can really push you down.
[Anusree Roy]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then to not have the to not have the support, you know, like I wish I wish I grew up now because my sister is a vice principal and I see the amount of support she gives her students who have some sort of disability, like the volume that’s available.
And I’m not suggesting at all, even now, that it’s equitable, but there’s a lot more that available than it was for me in the 90s in India.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, yeah. It absolutely is. It took a long time for for those kinds of things to happen instead of just like telling a child to work harder.
[Anusree Roy]
That’s right. That’s right.
[Phil Rickaby]
I wanted to move on a little bit because you have, in addition to your playwriting, you have been you’ve been working with in television and in writers rooms and there’s a lot of shows on your on your CV that you have worked on. But one thing that I’m curious about is what playwriting taught you that you were able to take into a writer’s room.
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, it’s character building. So in a writer’s room, the pace is super fast. Deliverables are like mile a minute.
And there is so much pressure to break a story from structure. Right. Because you’ve got to meet the, you know, teaser.
You know, you’ve got to have exciting teaser. And especially, you know, if you’re writing for some of these big streamers, there’s a five second rule. There’s a seven second rule.
There’s a 14 second rule. It all has to be super exciting and jungular. And then you’re writing to act.
You’re writing to the act one and the act two. And even though in a streaming service there are no conventional acts, you’re writing to it all the time. So there’s a pressure to break fast, break from structure, make it interesting.
But when you walk in as a playwright and that is your specialty, where you grew up in developing character, you become somebody that people can rely on, who can create complex characters. And I think that really, really helped me when I came into a television room as somebody who knew character work inside out.
[Phil Rickaby]
Is there a culture shock coming into a writer’s room and having to write to these specific beats, these acts? Oh my God, yes.
[Anusree Roy]
Oh my God, yes. It took me six, my first six years was like misery. I was like, I don’t even, what am I doing here?
None of this makes sense. And I just, I couldn’t find my way in, you know. And I remember always like for six years, I was like, what is going on?
I’m like underwater, drowning. I don’t understand how people write this fast. I don’t understand how it’s so, it’s moving a mile a minute.
How incredibly impressive it is for writers who write for television professionally to hold seven different versions of the same story in their head and revising for network notes over and over and over again while trying to keep the heart of the story the same. You know, like I was like, I don’t even, I don’t understand what’s going on. And it took me like, honestly, the first six years I was like, this is insane.
But I kept coming back because whenever I would sit to pray, I would get this gut feeling that like, you have to keep doing this. It’ll work out. You have to keep doing this.
But it took like six years of trying to understand what the hell was going on to finally feel like I belong.
[Phil Rickaby]
Is there ever somebody who will say like, this is how it works? Or do you just have to like watch the whirlwind around you and figure it out on your own?
[Anusree Roy]
You have to watch the whirlwind around you and figure it out on your own. There isn’t somebody that has the time to say this is how it works, you know, because it’s all so fast and furious. And when I started, my first show was in 2013 that I did.
And then I think 2015, 16, 17, I stepped away from television because I was dealing with some personal health things. And then when I kind of came back to it again after a three year break, I just had to figure it out. I had like dived in and I was like, oh my God, what is going on?
And it took me a long, long, long six years to kind of feel like I had my feet, you know, I soil under my feet again.
[Phil Rickaby]
And that was just time?
[Anusree Roy]
Time. Time, logging the hours, doing the work, sailing over and over again, logging the hours, logging the hours, logging the hours, time, time, time, watching television, reading television, just time, doing contract after contract, getting better, getting better and watching other writers, you know, really kind of understanding how they’re able to hold that much story. That’s the part that I was like, what are you doing?
Like when you because you’re when you’re breaking story in television, there’s multiple versions of the same scene, you know, multiple, like seven, eight versions of the same scene, depending on what the showrunner wants. I’m not used to that in theatre. Theatre is like there’s only one way that the story could go because we are we don’t write.
We don’t break a story in a week. Right. We don’t have a draft.
We don’t write 52 pages in six days. Absolutely not. You know, so it’s just the pace is different.
Totally, totally different. So that’s why I think in theatre you have like six years to write your play. Some plays take seven years.
Like it’s just all this so different, you know?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Anusree Roy]
That’s why.
[Phil Rickaby]
Among the shows that you’ve worked on, just to talk TV for just a second before we get back to theatre. You’ve written for the Netflix show, I Woke Up a Vampire. You’ve also worked on season two of Interview with a Vampire.
Did we? Did you have any kind of affinity for vampires before you started writing vampire shows?
[Anusree Roy]
No, everybody asks me this. One thousand percent. Everybody’s like, you must love vampires.
No, I totally do not. I found myself in these shows and, you know, I again came with character. Both those shows, especially Interview with a Vampire, has incredible character work.
I found myself in the shows, you know, being able to speak to the characters. And I Woke Up a Vampire has this incredibly awesome young girl character that I loved so much and loved writing for her. So I think I found myself in those shows being of service to the characters more than liking vampires, you know?
But everybody thinks I made sure I was on those shows because I love vampires, which is not true.
[Phil Rickaby]
Had you read the Anne Rice books before you came to the show?
[Anusree Roy]
Yeah, when I got the job, I had to read the book. Yeah, yeah, totally.
[Phil Rickaby]
Right, but not before that?
[Anusree Roy]
No, not before that. No.
[Phil Rickaby]
I had to ask about the vampire thing.
[Anusree Roy]
I know, you and everybody else.
[Phil Rickaby]
Sure, because when you look and you see both shows, you wonder, right?
[Anusree Roy]
Right, that’s right. Everybody’s like, Grishri loves vampires. She really has a thing for vampires.
[Phil Rickaby]
We have to stop that right now because it’s obviously not true. We have to, like, leave the door open for vampire shows but not get you, like, hemmed in on the vampire thing. So funny.
Now, the play Through the Eyes of God is at Theatre Passe-Mourai. And you’ve done plays at Theatre Passe-Mourai before. What’s it like coming back to Theatre Passe-Mourai?
[Anusree Roy]
Oh, it’s so incredible. It’s so incredible to feel a sense of belonging, to feel a sense of home, to work with your friends again. It’s absolutely incredible.
I’ve had the profound privilege to step back into that theatre and be welcomed so much with my dear, dear friend Marjorie, who’s also an incredible collaborator. One of my best friends, Thomas Morgan Jones. And my, you know, dear, beloved friend David DeGrow.
And to work with everybody again has been an absolute privilege of my life. And to craft the show in the exact way that I want to has been amazing. And, you know, that’s the thing when you write for television and theatre.
Television allows so much scope for a broader audience to meet your work. You know, like 10 million people, 20 million people seeing your work. Theatre allows you to present your work exactly how you wrote it without anybody else getting in there.
For television, you’re writing to a production. You’re writing to an established character. You’re writing to a showrunner’s taste who will, of course, rewrite you to match their own taste.
For theatre, you’re writing exactly what you want to write with no one making any changes. And then to coming into a theatre that is so dear to you, so precious, so comforting. It’s been an incredible process.
I’ve loved every, every minute of it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Obviously, the two disciplines have their benefits, right? Television has the ability to reach a wider audience. And theatre is like your vision.
As a playwright who’s sat in both worlds, is it something you can choose? For you, is it both? Or does your heart sit with one more than the other?
[Anusree Roy]
I think as long as I’m writing, I’m happy. I think what I am really looking forward to in television is having my own show and having audiences meet complex women who are South Asian telling complex stories. And how fortunate would I be to have my own show premiere on HBO and run for five seasons?
How fortunate would that be for me? And knowing me, it would probably tell stories about women or South Asian people at large. And that’s my interest, is telling stories about the South Asian diaspora and complex and nuanced and characters that take center stage and demand to be heard.
How fortunate would that be to tell that story? That’s what I’m really excited about for the next chapter in television. Because I’ve really enjoyed that in theatre.
I’ve had so many plays premiere. I’ve had so many plays published and produced. And that’s been so joyful to tell a story exactly how I’ve wanted to.
And in television, as a co-executive producer, as a writer, I’ve been of service to other people’s stories and shows and showed up with the most humble ability to contribute to someone else’s show. And I think the chapter that I am really excited about is for it to be my own and staff a room full of people, of South Asian writers, who can write to that story.
[Phil Rickaby]
When you first entered the world of television writing, is the idea of that something that you would have ever dreamed of?
[Anusree Roy]
Having my own show?
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.
[Anusree Roy]
Oh, of course. Oh, of course. Beyond a doubt.
Are you kidding? Of course. That was always the plan.
That is always the plan. That is always the vision. And I knew that would be so right from the beginning.
I just didn’t know when. I knew that just as I told you, I’ve known my life from a very young age. I just didn’t know when things were aligning.
And I still know that that to be true. I just don’t know when or how. I know that it is so.
I just don’t know what the pieces are to get there.
[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Just as we sort of approach the end of our conversation together, thinking about Through the Eyes of God, and as it is being performed at the Theatre Pasmoorai, is there something that you have discovered in performance that you didn’t expect?
[Anusree Roy]
I think in performance, there is a moment where Gabriella Sundar Singh, the wonderful, incredible actress, Gabriella Sundar Singh does that I didn’t expect, where there’s a character that makes a joke. And it’s a solo show, right? So she’s playing all the characters.
One of the characters makes a joke and laughs. And what she has done is, she makes both of the women in the scene laugh back to back. So it’s like one woman laughs, switches to another style of laughing, switching back to the original style of laughing, switching back to another style of laughing.
And it’s the most profound thing to watch when an actor and a director can take your work and make it better and make it more interesting. So I think that’s one thing that I’ve kind of really enjoyed. Because the play that’s on stage is very much kind of the play I wrote right from the beginning.
Not a lot has changed. So I’ve enjoyed discovering, you know, the nuances and the beauty and the laughs and the kind of deeper versions that the director and actor has brought to the show. So that’s been quite pleasurable for me to watch.
[Phil Rickaby]
It is always fascinating the way that, you know, as a playwright, you sort of give your work to a playwright, to a director and actors, and they then interpret what you’ve written through their own lenses and discover things that you never thought of. And that’s one of the magic things about theatre. And it must happen all the time in every single one of your plays.
There must be a moment similar to that.
[Anusree Roy]
It does. And, you know, I used to be much more experimental with directors and actors and who I gave my play to. And I think the older I’ve gotten and the more tough circumstances I’ve found myself in where once the play is out of your hand and it’s a terrible director or the cast is terrible and you’re just not getting along or the vision is not being respected, I’ve become a lot more economical in who I bring to the team.
But regardless whether it was a tough process or a very easy one like Through the Eyes of God and, you know, a very aligned process like Through the Eyes of God, it is always the same wherein somebody really does surprise you and makes the work richer or better in a way that you didn’t expect it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Well, Anushri, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. I’m so glad we were able to make this happen.
[Anusree Roy]
For sure. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. I’m going to tell you about who my guest is next week in just one moment. But first, as promised, let me tell you a little bit about the Patreon.
I can’t do this show without the people who have chosen to back me on Patreon. As you may know, Stageworthy is in its 10th year. And for most of the history of this program, I have paid for everything.
Even though a podcast is available to you for free, there are some costs involved with making a podcast. It costs money to have a website. It costs money for audio hosting and distribution.
It costs money for editing software. It costs to have transcripts. And I’m working on adding transcripts to the back catalog because of my patrons, I’ve been able to be able to pay for some transcript services.
So that’s great. And I can add those to all the episodes going forward. I’m working on adding to the back catalog, but that all costs money.
And all of that to say is I’m only covering the costs of making programs. So all the time and effort of scheduling interviews, doing the interviews, editing, and all the work that goes into getting this episode, getting this podcast out into the world behind the scenes, that is all on me. And so if you want to help me to make this program, go to patreon.com slash stageworthy and become a patron. Patrons get early access to episodes. We’ll have some conversations about things in the theatre industry. And also the more people who join, the more we’ll be able to do on the Patreon.
So if you want to be one of the people that helps to make this program, then please go to patreon.com slash stageworthy and become a patron. Next week, my guest is Virginia Woodham. And Virginia is a producer at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, which is, as it sounds, it’s like a, like the Fringe Festival, but for sketch comedy.
And I think with Toronto’s rich history of sketch comedy, it’s a really valuable and important part of our theatre ecosystem. So tune in next week to learn more about the Toronto Festival of Sketch Comedy with Virginia Woodham.
