The final studio show of Theatre by the Lake’s 2019 summer season, Guards at the Taj by Rajiv Joseph, opens on August 8.
It originally premièred in New York, with the Hollywood Reporter calling it "an exquisite piece of writing". The European première of the play in London launched the Bush Theatre’s new building in 2017.
As dawn breaks on the final day of construction of the Taj Mahal, two hapless Imperial Guards must once again resist the urge—by order of the Emperor—to look at the most beautiful monument the world has ever seen.
Humayun and Babur are about to discover beauty comes at a terrible price. An award-winning tale about beauty, the powerful and the powerless.
Rajiv Joseph is an acclaimed American playwright. His play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama. He has twice won the Obie Award for Best New American Play, for Guards at the Taj and for Describe the Night. In television, Rajiv has written for seasons four and five of Nurse Jackie, and is a writer on Apple TV series Little America.
Theatre by the Lake’s is directed by Kash Arshad, trainee artistic director at Freedom Studios in Bradford, who was assistant director on 2017’s Keswick show Handbagged. Guards features Luke Murphy as Babur and Devesh Kishore as Humayun.