Sunil Kuruvilla

Sunil Kuruvilla is a Canadian playwright from Waterloo, Ontario.[1] He is most noted for his play Rice Boy, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2003 Governor General's Awards.[2]

Educated at Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Windsor and Yale University,[3] he first emerged as a playwright in the early 1990s when he won a Shaw Festival competition with his play Fight of the Century.[3] His plays Bulldogs and Firetrucks (1994)[4] and Ears to Glass, Glass to Ground (1996)[5] were both selected for the prestigious Vancouver New Play Festival.

Rice Boy was first staged by the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2000 while Kuruvilla was a student there,[6] and received a production in Los Angeles by The Actors' Gang in 2001.[7] In 2001, his play Fighting Words was staged by Toronto's Factory Theatre,[8] and his play Minus 1 was staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival.[9] In 2002, his play Snapshot was staged in Louisville, Kentucky.[1]

Rice Boy was produced by Canadian Stage in 2003,[10] and was a Governor General's Award nominee that year following its publication by Playwrights Canada Press.

In 2009, Rice Boy was staged by the Stratford Festival, the festival's first-ever production of a play about the immigrant experience.[11] At that time, Kuruvilla was working in marketing/promotions at Wilfrid Laurier University.[12] Since then, he has become a television writer and college professor.