House of Joy

In an Imperial Harem in a place like India in a time like 1666, Hamida, a bodyguard, wakes to the oppression in her midst and decides to do something about it.

Seduction, skullduggery and swordplay in a mythic, swashbuckling action-romance for the ages!

Director: Daniel Banks

Dramaturg: Vidhu Singh

Producer: Pat Strong

Madhuri Shekar

Madhuri Shekar is a playwright based in New York City and a current fellow of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard. She is currently developing Evil Eye (a commission from Audible), Hockey Play (a commission from South Coast Rep), and Miriam For President, which will be produced at Victory Gardens in 2019, directed by Chay Yew.

Her play Queen had its World Premiere in April 2017 at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, was nominated for a Jeff Award for Best New Play and made the 2017 Kilroy’s List. She is the 2013/14 winner of the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting contest held by the Alliance Theatre for her play In Love and Warcraft, for which they did the world premiere production. It is published by Samuel French and is now being produced around the country and abroad. The Alliance Theatre then commissioned and produced two further plays – Bucket of Blessings and Antigone, Presented by the Girls of St. Catherine’s. Her play A Nice Indian Boy had its world premiere at East West Players and has been produced in Chicago by the Rasaka Theatre Company and EnActe Arts in San Francisco.

Her plays have also been developed or showcased at Center Theatre Group, the Old Globe, the Kennedy Center, the Hedgebrook Playwrights Festival (in conjunction with Seattle Rep) and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from USC, and a dual Master’s degree in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and USC. She is a member of the Ma-Yi writers lab and the Ars Nova Play Group in New York and a co-creator of the Shakespearean web series, Titus and Dronicus.

“I wrote House of Joy because I desperately wanted to escape from modern day America. What could be further than the harems of the Mughal Empire in the 17th century? And yet, the play wound up being about a once-mighty empire facing the consequences of hubris and injustice. About citizens waking up to oppression, about the tragedy of inertia, about the urgency of sacrifice. About women being complicit – and women kicking ass. So, I didn’t get to go very far after all.”

– Madhuri Shekar