Ayad Akhtar

David Waterman (Université de La Rochelle)

Ed. by Muneeza Shamsie, Independent Scholar - Asia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.5: South Asian Diasporic Literature and Culture, 1800-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Muneeza Shamsie (Independent Scholar - Asia), Niaz Zaman (Independent University Bangladesh)

Dates

Activity 2012-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Cultural Identities

South Asian American

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist

Other

Fiction

Resources

Ayad Akhtar, novelist, playwright and actor, was born on 28 October 1970 in New York City. Both his parents were doctors and had migrated from Pakistan to the United States. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended Brown University, majoring in theatre and religion, then moved to Italy and spent a year working with acting theorist and pioneer Jerzy Grotowski, author of Towards a Poor Theater (1968). After returning to the US, Akhtar continued at Columbia University, earning a degree in directing from the Graduate Film Program, while teaching acting and working alongside Andre Gregory, the French-born actor and director, in New York City and Vienna, Austria.

Akhtar’s 2005 film The War Within …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2595 words

Citation: Waterman, David. "Ayad Akhtar". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 December 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14529, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here