Saurabh Bhattacharya
Playwright & Literary Manager
Saurabh Bhattacharya’s career as a writer began in Indian print journalism in 1996, reporting on environmental and socio-political issues for Down To Earth and Life Positive before a stint in television with Business India TV. After migrating to Australia with his wife in 2003, Saurabh spent his first years as a new migrant piecing together a working life, from tele-sales to financial recruitment, while quietly keeping his writing alive: short stories, poems, and a novel still taking shape. In 2010 he retrained as a teacher, and has since built a second career shaping young minds in a Western Sydney girls’ high school, now as Deputy Principal.
It’s this dual life, journalist-turned-educator and always a writer, that Saurabh brings to Nautanki. His debut play, “Orko,” an appropriation of Shakespeare’s Othello set within the South Asian community of Western Sydney, premiered at Riverside Parramatta. A board member and the company’s Literary Manager, Saurabh now curates new and diverse work for Nautanki, and has helped develop the Spark Project, supporting the creative expression of South Asian diasporic youth across Sydney. His storytelling instinct, honed across newsrooms, classrooms and the stage, is grounded in a deep commitment to culture, identity. . .
Sonal Moore
Playwright
Sonal is a lawyer by day and a writer by night, and she knows which she prefers. Writing short plays since 2004, Sonal has had her work produced in theatre festivals around Australia, and internationally in the USA, India, Dubai and France, building a body of contemporary drama shaped by storytelling, culture and identity.
Sonal’s exploration of what it means to grow up in Australia as an Australian-born girl of Indian heritage started with her short play “White Weddings” and continued with “Eye of the Storm.” In 2023, her one-act play Mangalsutra looked at marriage across three generations of Gujarati women, focusing on the weddings of Mira, the first generation of her family born in Australia, and her daughter, Asha. It’s a story of cultural identity and the diaspora experience, passed from mother to daughter.
Sonal’s parents are from Gujarat, India. Her father was sent to Australia in 1959 for business, and after ten years, her parents decided to stay. Sonal was born in Melbourne. “Ten Years to Home,” which premiered with Nautanki Theatre in 2019, is an exploration of Sonal’s parents’ story, set against the political climate of Australia and India in the 1960s and the richness of the two cultures in which her family lives today. Across her work, Sonal brings a distinct voice to conversations about multicultural identity, community engagement and cultural awareness on the Australian . . .
Rajshri Roy
Collaborator
Rajshri Roy is an academic at the University of Sydney, where she specializes in nutrition and dietetics. Her research and teaching delve into the relationship between food, health, and culture; offering insights that resonate beyond the academic world. However, Rajshri’s passion doesn’t stop at nutrition; she has a keen eye for fashion, style and a deep love for the theatre arts, which she brings to life as a stylist for the “Ten Years to Home” production. Combining her research skill set with a creative flair, Rajshri is interested in curating costumes that not only reflect the characters but also enhance the storytelling. Born into Indian Bengali culture and spending life in 3 different countries with three cultures, Rajshri brings the best South Asian styling knowledge and understanding . . .
Shabnam Tavakol
Collaborator
Shabnam Tavakol is a versatile and experienced stage and film performer of over 20 years, received several excellent theatre reviews of her work. Her recent credit is playing the famous antagonist stepmother in the sell-out show “Sunderalla”, a queer Bollywood retelling of Cinderella at ARA Darlinghurst Quarter Theatre. One of her fondest roles is her solo performance of “Paradise Now” combining spoken poetry, puppetry, and dance.
Shabnam is Australian-raised, with mixed Iranian and Indian heritage, and comes with a mixed bag of performance craft. She trained under industry professionals from the Actors Centre Australia and Horizon Theatre Company’s School of Puppetry and Visual Performing Arts.She is also an awarded Indian dancer and believes her Indian Classical Dance training gaveher solid . . .
Dilroop Khangura
Collaborator
Dilroop Khangura is an Indian Australian actress and writer who was most recently awarded the 2021 Home and Away Equity Graduate Internship where she had the opportunity to go on the set of Home and Away and learn how the show is created. She was a participant of ATYP’s 2022 National Studio and is a graduate of NIDA’s Diploma of Stage and Screen Performance, a course that taught her how to devise her own work and ultimately inspired her to start writing pieces for the stage. She is fluent in Punjabi and English and enjoys creating work that features Punjabi . . .
