The University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of the Arts and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures are pleased to welcome multi-hyphenate performer, theatre practitioner, and playwright Sri Vamsi Matta to campus for the 2023–2024 academic year through the Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program.
Vamsi’s residency includes a 3-credit course in Fall 2023, “Whose Art Is It Anyway? Explorating Folk Performance from South Asia.” This course examines art through the social, personal, political, and spiritual aspects of one’s life and society through South Asia cultural and performance practices. The residency will also include performances, workshops, and cross-departmental and community collaborations.
About the Artist

Sri Vamsi Matta, (Vamsi, he/him), is a Bangalore-based theatre actor, writer, and director. His practice is influenced by his Dalit identity, experience, and social location. The histories of his family and community inform the questions, topics, and mediums that Vamsi engages with through his work. His most recent traveling solo show performance, Come Eat With Me – an invitation to folks from all caste, faith, and race locations – has received a tremendous response in the national and regional media across India. His play, Star in the Sky about the institutional murder of a Dalit Ph.D. scholar in 2016, often seen as a moment of reckoning for Indian academia’s inherent caste biases, won second place at the prestigious Tata Literature Live! Sultan Padamsee Award For Playwriting Sultan Padamsee Playwriting Awards. While in Madison, Vamsi is excited to engage with UW Madison’s own reckoning with historic inequities and contributing to its present campus culture and goals of fostering a greater sense of inclusion and belonging through the arts.
News
Events
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Dec05
Whose Art is it Anyway? @ 10:00 am Arts + Literature Laboratory map to Art Lit Lab
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Apr11
BLUE - Wisconsin Union Theater directions to Wisconsin Union Theater
Presenters
The 2023–2024 Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program is presented by the UW–Madison Division of the Arts and the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures. Residency co-sponsors are: Department of Theatre and Drama, Department of History, Center for Visual Cultures, Center for South Asia, Center for the Humanities, International Learning Community, Center for Research on Gender and Women, and the Human Rights Program.