Theatre Muse UK’s founder Caroline Worswick, was pleased to discuss the UK premiere of Dog Mom at Southwark Playhouse Borough, with director Ajay Chowdhury. Read our interview to find out more about the play’s association with National New Play Network, and how Chowdhury’s multi-layered career influences his directorial decisions.
Ajay, you are to direct an American play called Dog Mom. For those of us who do not know the story, can you give us an outline, please?
Dog Mom, by Tate Elizabeth Hanyok, follows Sarita, a recently divorced Indian-American woman in her fifties who is trying to rebuild her life in Brooklyn. She wants independence, order and absolutely no responsibility for anyone else. Naturally, she ends up fostering an older golden retriever.
She thinks it’s a temporary arrangement. The dog is less convinced. Before long, her carefully organised retreat has been invaded by dog parks, intrusive owners and an overfamiliar neighbour, Nell, who has a dog of her own.
Actors play both the people and the dogs, and the dogs have some extremely strong opinions. It’s very funny, but underneath the mayhem is a story about accepting affection when you’ve decided that needing anyone is the last thing you want.
As a woman in her mid-50s and divorced, I see a growing number of women in this situation of beginning again. Do you feel that this play is particularly relevant in today’s era of women seeking equality? How does the play deal with this subject?
Yes, I think it gives space to an experience we ought to see more often on stage. Sarita is in her fifties, divorced and without children, but her life is still full of possibility. She gets to be funny, difficult, desirable and uncertain. She doesn’t have to have worked everything out before we’re allowed to be interested in her.
There’s a question running through the play about who gets to decide what a fulfilled life looks like. Marriage and motherhood can be wonderful, but they aren’t the only ways a woman’s life can have meaning. Sarita is trying to discover what she wants after a marriage has ended, with all the expectations around family and being seen to cope that her South Asian background brings.
The play explores that through relationships rather than speeches. Her growing friendship with Nell matters enormously. Together they begin to form a little wolf pack. I hope there’s something encouraging in the idea that starting again can include needing other people, without giving up your independence.
As a writer and director with many years of experience, what drew you to directing Dog Mom?
Vinita Belani, the founder of EnActe Arts, has been a friend for decades. She sent me Tate’s script, and it made me want to return to directing after more than ten years away. I laughed, then found myself unexpectedly moved by this woman who is trying very hard to convince herself she’s fine.
I love the theatrical possibility of actors playing dogs without elaborate disguises. An audience recognises a look or a sudden burst of enthusiasm, and completes the transformation in its own imagination. That’s a lovely thing to work with.
I also recognised Sarita’s belief that she could make a plan and persuade life to cooperate. My own life has moved between technology, theatre and crime writing in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’m drawn to stories in which the interruption turns out to be the thing that matters. In this case, the interruption also swears at cats.
Dog Mom has its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse Borough and is a part of the National New Play Network’s initiative the Rolling World Premiere. Can you explain how this collaborative process works, and as a writer and director, how beneficial is this collaboration to the process of developing a play?
The idea is to give a new play several distinct productions, with the playwright involved throughout. Different theatres bring their own casts, directors and audiences to the work, share what they learn, and give the writer opportunities to develop the script in response. NNPN supports and helps coordinate that collaboration.
That’s enormously useful because a production reveals things you can’t fully discover on the page. A moment may land differently with another actor or in another space. You can begin to understand what belongs to the play and what belongs to one particular interpretation of it.
Tate has spoken about wanting each company to discover its own Dog Mom. That openness has allowed us to explore Sarita as an Indian-American woman in her fifties and to create our own visual world for London. As both a writer and a director, I value that combination: learning from earlier productions while leaving the next team room to surprise you.
Regarding collaboration, as a writer yourself, how important do you think it is for the playwright to be involved in the developmental process of their play?
Very important, particularly with a new play. The writer knows why something is there, including things that may not immediately be obvious to anyone else. Being able to ask about a line or a relationship can save a great deal of guesswork.
Working with Tate and Vinita on Sarita’s age and background has been a good example. We could explore what those changes meant together, rather than make assumptions about what the script could accommodate. The actual textual changes turned out to be surprisingly small.
But there also has to be room for actors and directors to discover something the writer hadn’t anticipated. I enjoy that exchange. With a novel, you spend a long time alone before other people become involved. In rehearsals, someone tries something and you can see a new possibility immediately. The writer’s involvement is most valuable when it helps that conversation stay open.
As well as having experience in writing and directing, you also have expertise in managing a global tech business, and you sit on several boards such as the Arts Council London. Do these skills help with handling not only the creative direction of the play, but also keeping one eye on the budget when making directing decisions?
Yes. I’m co-producing as well as directing, so I have to think about what we can achieve with the time and resources available. My business experience helps with preparation, setting priorities and bringing together people whose expertise I trust.
A budget makes you ask what a choice actually contributes. Does it help tell the story? Does it give the actors something useful to work with? Sean Cavanagh’s set uses 56 video screens, but the point is what the images do alongside the performances and how they invite the audience to imagine the world beyond them.
The other useful lesson is that being responsible doesn’t mean having all the answers. I want a designer or actor to suggest something I hadn’t thought of. You need enough discipline to make the production possible and enough freedom for people to try things that may not work. Both matter in a rehearsal room, and I’d hope in a good tech business too.
Which came first, your business career, or your writing and theatre career? And where did your love of theatre come from?
Theatre came first. I started directing in college, having tried my hand at acting and discovered I was quite terrible at it. Moving to the other side seemed a sensible decision, and rather kinder to the audience.
That was where it began, and I’ve now been directing for more than forty years. Business and, much later, crime writing became other parts of my life, but the pleasure of making something with a group of people and seeing an audience respond has stayed with me.
One of the most extraordinary things I’ve seen was Peter Brook’s nine-hour Mahabharata in Glasgow. I still think about how much theatre can ask an audience to imagine, and how willingly we do it. That sense of possibility is part of what keeps drawing me back.
Dog Mom makes its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse Borough on Wednesday 14 October to Saturday 7 November 2026. For more information visit: southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/dog-mom/
Biography
Ajay Chowdhury – Director
This new London production is being led by Ajay Chowdhury, whose career spans theatre, literature and technology. Previous productions he has directed in London include The Merchant of Vembley, Cymbeline, When We Dead Awaken, The Lover, Smooch Music, Gallows Humour and The Private Ear. In India he directed Equus, … and Indrajit, The Dock Brief and Cabin 12.
He has made two short films and was the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker/Bloody Scotland crime writing award, subsequent to which he published seven crime novels in his Kamil Rahman series, the first of which – The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) has been optioned for television. He has also written a children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, that was adapted into a musical by EnActe Arts and premiered in San Francisco. Two further books in the series, alongside a new standalone techno-thriller, are set to be published over the next year.
Alongside his work in the arts, Chowdhury was a co-founder of Shazam before its sale to Apple, and has founded or led several major technology companies including Seatwave and LineOne. His crossover background brings an unusual perspective to the production, combining storytelling, innovation and contemporary culture. Chowdhury was selected as part of the Asian Power 100, recognising the most influential Asians in the UK and named one of The Sunday Times’ Top 100 BAME Business Leaders. Ajay studied theatre directing at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
