Sushama Deshpande

Sushama Deshpane is a famous Indian actress and playwright. She is well known for her stage works like My Mother, The Gharwali, Her Malaak, His Wife and Vhay, Mee Savitribai. She is a famous face in the Hindi and Marathi theatre. She hails from Mumbai. Most of her works are in the Hindi language. Since childhood, she has shown great interest in theatre. She used to assist her father to theatres where he used to work. Often she participated in dance competitions and dramas to fulfill her childhood passion. As she grew up, she turned towards writing and commenced her career as a journalist, though she pursued a graduate degree in psychology. In her college days, she participated as an actor in the Purushottam Karandak theatre competition rewarding her with publicity flowing in newspapers. Soon Bhaskar Chandavarkar, a famous music director, approached her to act in the film Atyachar.

Then she worked in Begar. Besides these, she continued to be a journalist, writing a Purush-based column on the patriarchal framework. Once she came across the news of rape in the newspaper that shocked her so immensely that she wrote a script based on that incident. She was also attached intrinsically to the social rights movement. She was inspired by a persona like Savitribai Phule, which made her focus more on the matter of women’s rights. She worked with the rural women of Maharashtra to get a clearer idea about the women’s status and their conditions. Based on her experiences in this context, she constructed the script of Tichya Aaeechi goshta arthat mazya athavachincha phad, a conflict between a folk dancer and her journalist daughter.

She did two plays of sex workers of Sangali. Highly inspired by the women poets belonging to the 13th and 18th centuries, she did a musical play on them, paying tribute to their poetries and thoughts. She has always been an excellent writer writing, especially about women, their psychology, pains, courage and fights. She looks forward to writing more such dramas based on divorces, the emancipation of women from their toxic surroundings, and their transgression outside the patriarchal boundaries.