Playwright Ankita Raturi on the world premiere of नेहा & NEEL

What happens when a college road trip turns into a search for roots, history, and connection? Asian American theater collective Artists at Play and Latino Theater Company team up for their third collaboration in as many years with the joyous new comedy नेहा & Neel (Neha and Neel / नेहा और नील) by Ankita Raturi (pictured). Directed by Lily Tung Crystal, the world premiere is taking place at The Los Angeles Theatre Center through November 16.

The story centers around Neha, an Indian immigrant and single mom who worries she’s failed to pass her language and traditions down to her 17-year-old American-born son, Neel. Could a mother and son cross-country college tour be the answer? And perhaps with a special stop along the way, she can turn their trip into something much more important for both of them.

I decided to speak with playwright Ankita Raturi about the genesis for the play and how she developed the play as a comedy rather than a drama.

Thanks for speaking with me today, Ankita. Where did you study playwriting?

Thanks for reaching out! I got my M.F.A. from UCSD under Naomi Iizuka and Deborah Stein. I also had the opportunity to study with Jen Silverman and Jeni Mahoney back in undergrad at NYU. And while it isn’t playwriting in the western sense, I’m currently studying Kathak, which is a robust storytelling form that heavily informs all my writing.

Achintya Pandey and Pia Shah

Photo by M Palma Photography

Tell me about your previously produced plays.

My play Fifty Boxes of Earth was produced this past Spring at Theater Mu in Minneapolis-St. Paul, directed by kt shorb, choreographed by Ananya Chatterjea, and with puppets by Oanh Vu and Andrew Young. That play is a queer response to Dracula by Bram Stoker, trying to flip the inherent xenophobia of that story on its head. It weaves dramatic action, dance, and puppetry to evoke a magical community garden where Q, a nonbinary immigrant, tries to establish a new home for their family.

What sparked the idea for नेहा & Neel?

This play honestly comes from my own fear of one day having kids and raising them in America, and not being able to easily teach them Hindi or build a connection for them to our culture that is as strong as the one my parents built for me. And the play is me dealing with that fear with as many jokes as possible.

Achintya Pandey and Pia Shah

Photo by M Palma Photography

Did you always plan to write it as a comedy, or how did that format evolve?

I really wanted to write something that felt joyful, that could poke fun at my community in all our nonsense and hilarity, and at the same time show us having fun and being tender and fully human. My family spends most of our time laughing when we’re together, so when I set out to write about a family, I wanted them to make us laugh too.

You’ve said, “with every generation you have to hold on tighter.” What does holding on tighter look like for you personally?

I write plays and poetry in Hindi/Urdu. I make an active effort not to let English dominate the way I listen to the world. My playlists are full of South Asian artists. I watch Hindi films more than anything else. I keep up with Indian politics, particularly Delhi politics. I read South Asian authors and academics. When I speak out about injustice, it is most often the injustices of India that drive me to action.

My husband and his brother keep me current on cricket and my sisters keep me current on Bollywood gossip. I’m learning Kathak from my sister-in-law. I go home to Delhi at least once a year. Recently I also go to Kolkata whenever I’m in India with my husband, and I’m trying to learn Bangla so that I can feel local there, too. The center of my world, for better or worse, is in India and it always will be. I try to give what I can of what I have to my nephews.

And I just hope that one day, when I have my own kids, they feel the same way I do, although I know that it’s probably not fair for me to expect that of a new generation of kids growing up in diaspora. But I hope they at least speak Hindi and Bangla – no easy feat, I know – but then maybe they can at least have access to all of it, if and when they want that.

Achintya Pandey, Pia Shah, Parvesh Cheena

Photo by M Palma Photography

The Hope Diamond becomes a touchstone in the story. Why did you choose that piece of history to explore India’s connection to the U.S.?

I’m so preoccupied with empire and the everyday pedestrian legacies of colonization that we encounter like they’re nothing – English, Hindi even, in a way, the railways, turmeric lattes and diamonds from Africa and the Indian subcontinent sitting nonchalantly in the great museums of the West. As an Indian, I am most drawn to the Koh-i-Noor, which lives in the crown jewels collection in London, and the Hope Diamond, which I saw as a child myself living in the D.C. area. My no-doubt imperfect memory of going to see it is something of an origin myth for this play.

Achintya Pandey, Pia Shah, Parvesh Cheena

Photo by M Palma Photography

Humor runs throughout the play, even while tackling colonialism and cultural loss. Why was it important for you to use laughter as an entry point to those topics?

Laughter is how I handle everything. I joke my way through the roller coaster of my chronic illness, through the uncertainty of a career as an artist, and through the trauma of my family’s history still only a couple generations from the independence struggle and partition. It’s not new or unusual for me to approach it all with humor. And cultural loss is undeniably an excellent playground for joke writing – just ask any comic from an immigrant family.

Achintya Pandey, Pia Shah, Parvesh Cheena

Photo by M Palma Photography

Have you worked with the three actors previously? (Achintya Pandey, Pia Shah, Parvesh Cheena)

I haven’t! They’re all so great, I am extremely lucky. Pia really understands Neha, the mom – she’s a mom herself and she grew up both here and in India, plus she’s so funny and so grounded at the same time, it’s amazing. Achintya, ironically, is completely fluent in Hindi, so it’s really fun to watch him play this character that really struggles with Hindi and feels inadequate because of it – he pulls it off beautifully. And Parvesh plays the 16 unique South Asian characters they meet on their journey from San Francisco to Washington D.C. through airports, airplanes, colleges, a gas station, and a roadside restaurant – it’s a frankly athletic feat of fast-paced comedy that is really something to witness.

You’re also a Kathak dancer. Does it play a part in the story? 

I love this question! I’m a second-year student of Kathak, learning both theory and practice, but I wouldn’t call myself a Kathak dancer yet. I think I still need to earn that. And Kathak doesn’t specifically feature in this play, but I do think there is a fast-paced rhythm to the writing. And there’s a moment where the characters listen to a Devdas song in the car and talk about Madhuri Dixit, the most iconic Kathak dancer in recent Bollywood history. I do incorporate Kathak and other dance vocabularies more explicitly in some of my other plays, like Fifty Boxes of Earth and The Elephant is Very Like.



Your plays have been developed by some of the country’s leading theaters. How or why does this world premiere with Artists at Play and Latino Theater Company stand apart?

Artists at Play’s producing team has been so singularly supportive of me and my work. They commissioned me, I’ve had workshops of two different plays with them, and now this world premiere production in collaboration with Latino Theater Company. It’s rare to have that sustained of a connection with one company, to really go through a whole development cycle with them. Artists at Play has been my artistic home in L.A. since 2022 and I’m so grateful for them.

Did you have any concerns about using foreign language letters (नेहा & Neel) in the title?  

No, the title does what I want it to do. But I do notice people tripping up on it, or just ignoring the first half and calling the play Neel. They’ll figure it out, though, I’m not worried. It’s Neha’s play in a lot of ways and she won’t be ignored.

If audiences leave with one takeaway from the play, what do you hope it is?

I hope people see themselves in the play, in Neha or in Neel or in Arnav, or in any of the over a dozen avatars. I hope people see the expanse of the South Asian diaspora. And I hope people take away some joy. I hope they leave the theater having laughed and laughed, having felt that feeling of laughing out loud with a whole audience of people laughing together. I think we all need that, and I think we all deserve stories about our communities that give us that, that give us audible, palpable joy.

Thanks so much!

Thank you, Shari!

नेहा & Neel continues on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m. through November 16 at The Los Angeles Theatre Center at 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90013. Parking is available for $8 with box office validation at Los Angeles Garage Associate Parking structure, 545 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90013 (between 5th and 6th Streets, just behind the theater). Tickets range from $10–$48. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (213) 489-0994 or go to https://www.latinotheaterco.org/.