Kristine Landon-Smith Author

From Tamasha, the award-winning theatre company that brought us East is East. Kristine Landon-Smith, Director and co-creator: joint founder and Artistic Director of Tamasha and has directed all of the company’s shows. Kristine jointly won, with Sudha Bhuchar, the 2005 Asian Women of Achievement Award for Arts and Culture and the 2010 First Women Award in the Tourism and Leisure Category. Her 1996 production, East is East, was nominated for an Olivier award and her original production of Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and A Funeral won the Barclays Theatre Award for Best New Musical. Her production, Strictly Dandia, was a sell-out success at the Lyric Hammersmith in both 2004 and 2005. Kristine’s freelance credits include directing with the Royal Court Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Palace Theatre Westcliff, Nitro, Yellow Earth Theatre and with the Royal Danish Theatre, where she directed the Con:FUSIONS workshop in 2005, aimed at developing cultural diversity in Scandinavian theatre. Kristine has also been a regular guest director at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama and has also taught at East15 Acting School, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, Australia, the National School of Drama in India, Central School of Speech and Drama, London and L’Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Paris. Her first short film Midnight Feast, was screened at the 11th Raindance Film Festival. Kristine’s radio credits for BBC include A Yearning; Women of the Dust, which won CRE Race in the Media Awards; and an adaptation of Lysistrata by Ranjit Bolt for the BBC World Service. More recently, Kristine has directed The Trouble with Asian Men (artsdepot, Soho Theatre and UK tours), A Fine Balance (Hampstead Theatre and UK tour), Tamasha’s first children’s play, Child of the Divide (Polka Theatre, artsdepot and UK and US tours) and Tamasha’s first play with a youth cast, Lyrical MC (London TWAM TO PRINT Oct 24:Play anthology 24/10/2012 12:37 Page 10 11 tour). In 2008, she directed Sweet Cider, a new play by TDA writer Emteaz Hussain, the new musical Wuthering Heights (national tour March - June 2009), The House of Bilquis Bibi (national tour 2010) and most recently a showcase for The Arrival at Alchemy Festival in the Southbank Centre (April 2012) inspired by Shaun Tan's graphic novel in collaboration with Circus Space. Sudha Bhuchar, Co-creator: joint founder and Artistic Director of Tamasha, and is both an actor and playwright. She played Rabia in Emteaz Hussain's Sweet Cider at the Arcola Theatre in 2008. In 2006, she played Dina Dalal in Tamasha’s A Fine Balance (based on the novel by Rohinton Mistry) at Hampstead Theatre. Her many acting credits include, Murder (BBC) by Abi Morgan, EastEnders (BBC), Doctors (BBC), Holby City (BBC) and Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Royal National Theatre), and she is a regular on the BBC Radio drama Silver Street. Her writing credits for Tamasha include Balti Kings, Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and A Funeral, Strictly Dandia and A Fine Balance in which she also performed, in May 2006, her first children’s play: Child of the Divide (Polka Theatre) and most recently her adaptation of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba - The House of BIlquis Bibi. She writes regularly with Shaheen Khan and their many credits include three series of Girlies for BBC Radio 4 and Balti Kings (the stage play, as well as a six part series for Radio 4). Their screenplay, The House Across the Street, has been shown on BBC4 as part of a new writers’ initiative, and they have co-written an episode of Doctors for the BBC. Sudha also co-wrote a short film Midnight Feast, which was screened at the 11th Raindance Film Festival. Sudha jointly won, with Kristine Landon-Smith, the 2005 Asian Women of Achievement Award for Arts and Culture and the 2010 First Women Award in the Tourism and Leisure category. Louise Wallinger, Co-creator: first started creating Verbatim Theatre when she cofounded Non-Fiction Theatre Company with Mark Wing-Davey. Their first production, Sex 1; Death 2 in 2001 was performed at the Edinburgh Festival, BAC and Soho Theatre. Followed by We Haven’t Said a Porky Pie Yet at the Edinburgh Festival and BAC and See-Through Soho for Soho Theatre. She went on to write two radio plays Audio Recordings of Human Traffic and Cut Me and I Bleed Elvis for BBC Radio 4. She has worked with DV8 on To Be Straight With You at the National Theatre and she performed most recent solo verbatim show Neighbours as part of Face to Face Festival of Solo Theatre at The Lost Theatre. She has taught Verbatim Technique at Soho Theatre, on Tamasha’s new writing workshops and to the Youth Theatre at Theatre Royal Stratford East who went on to create Mad Blud.