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 and community engagement.
He is a valued part of Nautanki’s creative team.
Writing Credits
- ‘Orko’ – A Three-Act Tragedy (in development, 2026)
- ‘ ‘Data-informed’ or ‘data-driven’? The challenges of employing quantitative data from standardised testing to inform educational policies’ – Conference paper, Southern Cross University, 2024
- ‘King Lear and Oration on the Dignity of Man: A comparative study unit of work for Year 11 advanced students’ – mETAphor (3), 2015
- ‘Idealism in literature: a conceptual unit of work for Year 11 students’ – mETAphor (3), 2014
- ‘Civil disobedience and the power of no’ – Advancing Together (3:1), 2014
- ‘Whistleblowing and the rule of law’ – Published online at Lawyers Weekly, 2013
