Vivek V. Narayan is a scholar, writer, and performance-maker working on caste and anti-caste politics in south India. He is Assistant Professor of English, Theatre, and Performance Studies at Ashoka University and an alumnus of Stanford University, California, Royal Holloway, University of London, and St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. His ongoing book project, Stolen Fire: Caste Scripts and Anti-Caste Politics in South India, 1806-1941, views the long history of anti-caste struggle in colonial-era Travancore through the lens of performance. His work has appeared in scholarly publications such as Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures, and J-CASTE; in literary journals and mainstream media such as The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, Muse India, The Caravan, AZURE, The Bombay Review, and The Hindu; and on stage at various venues in India, the UK, and the US. His theatre work includes Walking to the Sun, an original play directed by Sunil Shanbag (Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, 2010-14) and Suman Mukhopadhyay (Urbana-Champaign, 2023), a production of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (California, 2015), an original play he wrote and directed called Pestilences (Bangalore, 2012), a devised performance called Ends and Beginnings based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, which won multiple awards at Thespo 8 (Best Play, Best Director, Best Production Design, Best Male Actor, Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role, and Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role) (Mumbai, Bangalore, 2006), and the original play, Mime X: Too Close to the Pixels, which was shortlisted for the Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award (unproduced, 2008). He has been awarded the Bluestone Rising Scholar Prize (Brandeis University, 2019), the Charles R. Lyons Memorial Prize for Outstanding Dissertation (Stanford University, 2019), a long-term award from the Charles Wallace India Trust (Royal Holloway, University of London, 2008), as well as postdoctoral fellowships from the Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities (University of Edinburgh, 2023), and the International Centre of Advanced Studies: Metamorphoses of the Political (ICAS:MP) (New Delhi and University of Erfurt, 2024).
