Anubha Yadav

Penning memorable dialogues as a strategy for asserting authorship- Case study of the screenwriting practice of Anu Singh Choudhary on the webseries Aarya

University of Delhi, India

Anu Singh Choudhury has been the screenwriter on the Emmy nominated web series, Aarya (Amazon Prime), an adaptation of the Dutch crime drama, Penoza. Aarya has been directed and created by Ram Madhvani who is known for his fluid 360 degree shooting style (with multiple cameras) which often means the screenplay changes a lot on the shoot and spontaneity of actors and action is encouraged on the set. Madhvani uses the screenplay only as a base document from which he builds further as he shoots. In this paper, I discuss how as a screenwriter, Choudhury uses dialogues as a tool/strategy to assert her authorial voice and manage her authorial anxieties while collaborating with Madhvani on Aarya. Using Choudhury’s interview, I examine how over the three seasons of writing Aarya she has adapted to the style of the director, Madhvani and found ways to mark scenes with dialogues which not only define the series but also work towards preserving her creative labor and voice.

Anubha Yadav is a novelist, screenwriter and academic at University of Delhi, India. She is the author of Scripting Bollywood: Candid Conversations with Women Screenwriters of Hindi Cinema, an anthology of fourteen interviews of women screenwriters in Bombay cinema from the 1970s to present times (Kali Books, June 2021). Her debut novel, The Anger of Saintly Men was published in 2021. Her ongoing doctoral thesis focuses on women screenwriters in the Bombay film industry. Her research interest includes- screenwriting history, gender & screenwriting & the screenwriter as a researcher of screenwriting.