Ramu Ramanathan

Ramanathan was born on 29 December 1967 in Kolkata and later moved to Mumbai. He completed his schooling from St. Stanislaus High School, Mumbai. In 1987, Ramanathan graduated from Mithibai College with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. He penned his first one-act play in the same year, I am I. Later, he completed his Diploma in Journalism from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai and MA in English Literature from the University of Mumbai.

Later, Ramanathan penned 13 one-act plays for inter-collegiate competitions. Also he penned radio plays and radio documentaries for AIR (produced by S D Prins, a rare motivated officer in Akashvani). Along with Sunil Shanbag, he explored alternative spaces for plays on top of a water tank at the YWCA in Andheri which was transformed into an amphitheatre. Also, he founded and organised the IIT Theatre Fest in 2006 along with Raja Mohanty at the IDC in IIT.

For ten years he edited a theatre journal for Prithvi Theatre called PT Notes which was published by Sanjna Kapoor. Later he co-edited the eSTQ bulletin from 2005. He ran a play-reading movement for more many years in which unperformed, unpublished plays (more than 75 plays in English, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi) were read in front of an invited audience.

• Combat, published by National School of Drama (2003)
• Collaborators And Mahadevbhai, Sahitya Akademi (2006)
• Tathasthu ("So Be It"), in The Little Magazine (2010)
• Mahadevbhai (in Marathi), Popular Prakashan (2011)
• 3 Sakina Manzil and Other Plays (in English), Orient Blackswan (2012) - An anthology of eight plays: Shanti, Shanti It’s A War; The Boy Who Stopped Smiling; Curfew; Mahadevbhai (1892–1942); Collaborators; 3, Sakina Manzil; Shakespeare And She; Jazz.
• Book Binding with Adhesives along with Tony Clark and P Sajith
• My Encounters With a Peacock, Red River (2017)
• Babri Masjid, 25 Years .. along with along with Irfan Engineer and Sameena Dalwai (Gyan Prakashan) (2017)
• To Sit on A Stone - And Other Shorts, Red River (2020)
• Mumbai Murmurings: 213* Tiny Tales of Theatre (Manipal Universal Press) (2023)
• Two plays: Cotton 56, Polyester 84 and Comrade Kumbhakarna, Red River (2023)

Ramu Ramanathan, Group Editor, PrintWeek India and Campaign India

In 1993, Ramanathan penned Shanti, Shanti, It's A War (Best Play at The Hindu - All India Playscript Competition). This was produced by Madras Players. The play was penned in 1992, within the first ten days after 6 December.

In the mid-nineties, he wrote and directed a Gripp's play (a children's play) The Boy Who Stopped Smiling which performed 150-odd shows. More than one hundred of these shows were organized by Sanjna Kapoor, the producer of the play, who created a solid theatre network across the country.

Ramanathan directed Vaikom Mohammed Basheer’s Me Grandad ‘Ad An Elephant, and later Marguerite Duras’ L’amante Anglaise (both with university students) and Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and Jean Genet’s Deathwatch and Vaclav Havel’s Audience and a play called Nothing (for V Theatre Group).

Similarly, his collaboration with a group of architecture students resulted in three plays and one delightfully wicked piece called PM @ 3 pm. This group hosted a 7-day workshops on set design and theatre aesthetics, and fabricated four model sets of King Lear, for four language theatres’ directors in Mumbai. Later, the group staged three student productions: Yaar, What’s the Capital of Manipur!; The Sanjivani Super Show; Medha and Zoombish – II.

Ramu Ramanathan has workshopped with students and taught at KRIVIA, IDC (IIT Powai), University of Mumbai, Symbiosis (Pune), and has additionally been associated with at least 20 educational institutes across the country.

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