Ankita Raturi

Biography

Ankita Raturi | अंकिता रतूड़ी (she/her) is a bisexual, bicultural, bilingual writer currently living in southern California. She grew up in and around New Delhi, Jakarta, and Washington D.C., and has spent many years living and working in New York City. Ankita writes in Hindi/Urdu and English about the impossibilities of language, living between cultural identities, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism. Her plays are often populated with queer characters navigating new and unfamiliar territory. Ankita is the inaugural recipient of the Asian Pacific American Friends of the Theater & Artists at Play Emerging Playwright Commission. She is also the recipient of a Sloan Commission with Ensemble Studio Theatre. Her audio play, Backwaters, is available to listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as part of the 2021 Wagner New Play Festival. Ankita has developed new plays through UCSD, NYU, Artist at Play L.A., Ensemble Studio Theatre, The COOP, Atlantic Pacific Theatre, Theater Masters, The Hearth Theater, Hypokrit Theatre Company, New York Shakespeare Exchange, Pete’s Candy Store, and Natyabharati. Her devised work with co-creator Charlotte Murray has been seen at Fresh Ground Pepper, Corkscrew Theater Festival, and Dixon Place. Ankita has a B.F.A. in Drama from NYU. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in Playwriting at UC San Diego with the guidance and mentorship of Naomi Iizuka and Deborah Stein. 

UCSD Credits

Fifty Boxes of Earth 

Backwaters (WNPF '21, audio play)

The Elephant is Very Like (staged reading)

Education

BFA in Drama, NYU Tisch School of the Arts (Playwrights Horizons Theater School) 

2016/17 Literary/Dramaturgy Fellow, Berkeley Repertory Theatre