Ruth D’Silva
she/her
Writer | 2023 Bursary
Bursary Supported by Nicole Kidman
“The MCG Futures bursary will help me develop a play that tells the tale of the colonised rather than the coloniser revisiting an old classic. I also receive the guidance and mentorship of an MCG team committed to encouraging unheard voices. Priceless at this stage of my career as an emerging writer. I am so happy.”
The bursary allowed Ruth to champion global majority voices by writing a radical theatre adaptation of a British classic set in colonised India.
Contributor to MGCfutures podcast futures Remixed Episode 4: Power (Coming Soon)
Since receiving the bursary…
Ruth D’Silva is an emerging working-class, Anglo-Indian writer living in South London. As a person of dual heritage, her blood runs with the colonised and the coloniser, giving her a unique drive to bring people together and contemplate how a difficult colonial history affects us today in our daily lives through the lens of drama.
Her play Bungalow ran at Theatre503 in March 2025, a magically realistic and comic production asking the tough question “How to do you care for the elderly parent who used to abuse you?”. It was funded by the Arts Council of England. Ruth’s MGCfutures funded project adapted the classic colonial novel Black Narcissus, in which she flips the perspective from the colonisers to the colonised. The development of the play has subsequently been supported by Donmar Warehouse, Stratford East and the National Theatre.
Ruth was selected for the 2024 Kay Mellor screenwriting cohort with her script Merle about real life actress Merle Oberon who passed for white in the 1930s golden age of Hollywood and was among three writers from the group chosen to be showcased at Somerset House. Ruth was also shortlisted for the RSC 37 Plays Folio and is an alumni of the Royal Court Intro to Playwriting group and Soho Theatre Labs.