Please note: The Annual Address will be delivered online via Zoom Webinar. Please book on this page and we will email you the live link 24 hours before the event. If you are booking today and do not see the ‘Book’ button, please email events@str.org.uk and we will send you the links.

The Annual Address will follow the STR AGM at 6pm. The AGM is only for members, but the Annual Address is open to members and non-members.

Annual Address: ‘Thoughts on Decolonising the Theatre’

Delivered by Jatinder Verma

Please join us for the STR 2021 Annual Address with Jatinder Verma. Jatinder is a distinguished theatre director and ground-breaking founder of Tara Arts, and has directed an extraordinary range of productions ranging from Shakespeare and Moliere to Sanskrit classics. As Artistic Director of Tara Arts, Jatinder developed a unique approach to theatre – adapting Asian dramaturgical principles to European drama. This approach, which he has termed “Binglish”, also informs his productions of Indian plays. Jatinder will share his views on theatre and theatre-making, drawing upon his wealth of experiences.

BIOGRAPHY

Jatinder grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and arrived in the UK as part of the “Exodus” of Kenyan Asians in February 1968, aged 14. He founded theatre company Tara Arts in 1977 as a response to the racist murder of young Gurdip Singh Chaggar in West London.

His ‘Binglish’ approach characterised a range of productions: from Gogol’s The Government Inspector in 1988 and Buchner’s Danton Death in 1989, to Moliere’s Tartuffe, which was staged at the National Theatre in 1990, where Jatinder was the first-ever non-white director. He took a similar approach to the staging of Indian plays – the modern classic Hayavadana in 1985 and the first-ever staging at the National of the Sanskrit classic The Little Clay Cart in 1992 and Dance Like A Man in 1997.

To mark the new century, Jatinder conceived and directed an encounter between Indian and Greek epics in the staging of 2001- A Ramayan Odyssey. Shakespeare productions include Troilus and Cressida, Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Macbeth and, in 2019, a Japanese version of Othello (“Ainu Othello”), was staged with a Japanese cast at Tara. Other productions include Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and The Miser, Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Beaumarchais’ Figaro and Marivaux’s The Game of Love and Chance.

Along with designer Claudia Mayer, Jatinder led the re-building of Tara’s home in south London to create Britain’s first multicultural theatre, fusing Edwardian brick and Indian wood. The new Tara Theatre was formally opened in September 2016 by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. In 2017, Jatinder was made an Honorary Fellow of Royal Central; in the same year, he was awarded an MBE for services to diversity in the arts.