Tara Arts

Tara Theatre

Tara Arts was founded in 1977 as a direct response to the racist killing of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall in 1976 and emerges out of the protests and youth movements of that time.

Led by Jatinder Verma, who was the organization’s artistic director for over forty years, and set up with Sunil Saggar, Ovais Kadri, Parveen Bahl and Vijay Shaunak, the company produced new plays as well as adaptations of classic texts, focused on South Asian stories, which toured regionally, nationally and internationally, developing new audiences and providing a platform for British South Asian talent. As a trail-blazing British Asian-focused arts organization, it created a much-needed platform for British South Asian directors, playwrights, performers, musicians and choreographers.

It initially started out as small community touring theatre company but by 1985 it was the first South Asian-led theatre company in Britain to be funded by the Arts Council. In 1983 it opened the Tara Arts Centre in Garratt Lane, which has remained the company’s base ever since. The company’s first productions focused on the migrant experience and the complexities of making home in Britain through explorations of identity and cross-cultural connections, which Verma describes as ‘Binglish’. During the 1980s and into the 1990s, the company’s style further evolved. In the early 1990s Verma adapted classics of European theatre into South Asian contexts, including Danton’s Death (1989), Tartuffe (1990), the company’s first co-production with the National Theatre, Oedipus the King (1991) and Troilus and Cressida (1993). The epic Journey to the West (2002) focused on British South Asian diasporic experiences and especially on twice migration, exploring journeys from South Asia to East Africa to Britain, based on verbatim interviews within the South Asian community.

In 2009, in a collaboration with the National Theatre, Tara Arts co-produced Hanif Kureishi’s play The Black Album (2009), adapted from his own novel, which considers the fallout from The Satanic Verses controversy. During the 2010s, collaborations with Farrukh Dhondy followed, including productions of his plays Bollywood Jack (2016) and his adaptation of The Tempest, Miranda (2012).

In 2007 the studio opened as a 70-seat performance venue and in 2012 Tara received permission to refurbish and extend the building to house a 100-seat theatre – Tara Theatre opened in 2016.

Verma stepped down from the role of artistic director in 2020, handing over to Abdul Shayek. In 2022 Shayek directed the play Silence, a co-production with the Donmar Warehouse. The play was collaboratively written by Sonali Bhattacharyya, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Ishy Din and Alexander Wood and was adapted from Kavita Puri’s radio series and book Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, based on oral history interviews. Shayek led the company until his sudden death in 2023. He was succeeded by Natashi Kathi-Chandra, who has worked at Tara Arts as an associate director since 2022. Tara Arts to this day remains committed to its long-standing political activist roots that focus on societal change and fostering cross-cultural dialogue and connections through storytelling from a South Asian perspective.