Atiha Sen Gupta

Atiha Sen Gupta is a young playwright and IdeasTap member who won funding through the first round of the Ideas Fund. Here, she tells us about her play, What Fatima Did, and reveals what it's like to see you work come to life on stage.

A lot of people have asked me whether I'm Fatima or whether I've ever worn the Hijab. I'm not Muslim. I did know a few people at school who suddenly started wearing the Hijab, but it wasn't like I felt I needed to write a play about it. It kind of came together after 9/11 when I suddenly felt very much like I was 'other'. People were making the assumption that I was Muslim. They were seeing an Asian person and hurling abuse. Several members of my family had that experience. It was a knee jerk reaction.

I've been a member of Hampstead Theatre's young drama programme, Heat and Light, since I was in my early teens and I'm still a member. I didn't write this play for the group, but this is the first time that a member of the group has had a play in the main house.

Hampstead do these Daring Pairings, which is a new writing festival. I had the chance to be involved with a play that was started by the playwright Roy Williams. He wrote ten minutes and then we wrote the rest. Hampstead Theatre are really daring and creative, it's incredible because from that project they gave me a grant and encouraged me to write this play.

I've always written but it's not until recently that I've seen myself as a playwright. My Mum's a writer so I come from a literary background, but the thought of writing a play was too public. I didn't imagine that I could write for a big public space. Seeing What Fatima Did come to life on the first day of rehearsals was brilliant. I've heard all these horror stories about the writer and director hating each other or the cast hating each other, but I couldn't have hoped for a better team.

I've read some of the reviews. I don't avoid them and I don't look for them, but one night I made the mistake of googling the play and I read someone's blog about it. She was a lot less kind than the critics. She said it was naive writing, which wasn't nice to read.  

I came to IdeasTap because I wanted to make sure the play would definitely go on. The website was really new at the time. It was great when I heard I'd won the funding. It made it so much easier to get to the stage. All the small things fell into place. It assured the production.

As the playwright I've been surprised by the amount of time I've spent doing publicity and talking about the play. What really surprised me was the amount of re-writes that I did. That was really shocking. The Artistic Director, Anthony Clark, who is an exceptional man, was like, you know you can re-write while the play is actually on? There was a day that I sat with the Literary Manager, Neil, for thirteen hours just re-writing and going over stuff. I had no ideas playwrights could do that.

Atiha was speaking to Katie Jackson