Anita and Me

Description

This poignant coming-of-age tale follows Meena, a young girl growing up in the only Punjabi family in a 1970s Black Country mining village. Meena spends her days happily getting into scrapes with the other local children until one day the impossibly cool Anita enters her life. Suddenly Meena knows exactly who she wants to be but is Anita all that she seems? Soon Meena's world is turned upside down as she is caught between two very different cultures. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It has been adapted for the stage by the multi-award-winning Tanika Gupta.

Tanika Gupta has written for theatre, radio, film and television. Aside from the works published by Oberon, her stage plays include Voices On The Wind (NT Studio), Skeleton (Soho Theatre), On The Couch With Enoch (Red Room - BAC) and The Waiting Room (NT) which won the John Whiting Award. She has also translated Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan for the National Theatre Education Touring and written plays for Theatre Royal Stratford East's Young Actor's Company Brood and Squid. Tanika is an Honorary Fellow at Rose Bruford College and was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2008 for Services to Drama.

Meera's brilliant novel is a wonderful coming of age story. It's an engaging and funny tale set in a tight knit community about a young girl trying to decide her cultural identity and I look forward immensely to realising it on stage. * Roxana Silbert, Artistic Director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre. *