In May the Mrs D'Silva creative team spent a week in Kolkata to begin transforming the novel into a new stage play.

With the help of a grant from the British Council, author Glen Peters travelled with playwright Lewis Davies, theatre director Rebecca Gould, and Indian-Irish actress Shereen Martineau for a four day workshop in partnership with Tin Can visual arts and performance company, known for its groundbreaking work in English, Hindi and Bengali theatre.

The workshop, led by Tin Can director Soumyak Kanti de Biswas with Rebecca Gould, was a fusion of very different artistic and working styles.

“Tin Can are a starburst of talent, the advance party of a 21st century Bengal renaissance” Lewis Davies

For the British team, used to a model of creating plays where the script is written first and it is the actors’ job to bring the words to life, it was an eye-opener to work with a company who create plays as an ensemble, with the writer just one voice among many.

“For me Tin Can encapsulated how collaborative theatre should work - each member of the group was entirely open and willing to push well beyond their comfort, physically and emotionally. Collectively they were able to read and interpret the pictures created by fellow members with amazing speed and then to add to them” Rebecca Gould

There was also much debate about the content of the play and what kind of story it should tell.  The book itself is a hybrid – a whodunnit, a love story, and a political thriller – which has its beginnings in a community founded on the mixing of different cultures. It is set at a pivotal moment in Kolkata’s history: the Maoists are gaining prominence; the Raj has ended but the British still hold many key jobs in industry.

For Tin Can, this was a chance to explore the history of their own city, seen from the perspective of Glen, a member of the minority Anglo-Indian community who grew up there but emigrated to the UK in the 1960s. And for the UK team, the opportunity to see the locations in the book for themselves made it possible to really bring it to life.

“Rebecca’s emphasis on the need to follow a script, although at first difficult for the actors, transformed the mime, dance, music and drama into a powerful amalgam of words and action which I hope will be knockout theatre” Glen Peters

The team hope to hold another workshop at a later stage, to collectively develop the play into a final form which can be produced in both India and the UK.

They also appeared at Seagull Arts and Media Centre, before Glen flew back to appear at India Noir at the National Portrait Gallery, and at Asia House's Festival of Asian Literature.

About the book:

A murder mystery set in 1960s Kolkata, the novel tells the story of the young widow Mrs Joan D’Silva, whose detective instincts lead her into a dangerous underground world of corruption, violence, sexual exploitation and political unrest.

It was based on Glen's own experiences of growing up in the Anglo-Indian community and was inspired by his recollection of a childhood memory of discovering the body of a dead woman on the banks of the river Ganges.

The novel was published in June 2009 and was launched at Waterstone’s Piccadilly, London and at Rhosygilwen Arts Centre in Pembrokeshire, Wales, before touring bookshops, libraries and community gatherings across the UK. It was bestseller of the month at Pages of Hackney bookshop in London.

It has been praised for ‘its vivid evocation of a bygone era’, its ‘warmth and vitality’, and its rich descriptions of Indian cuisine, landscape and culture. It’s been described as ‘a gripping crime thriller’ and ‘an absolute gem of a novel’.

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