About Team
Rohit Chokhani: Founder/Artistic Producer
Rohit Chokhani is a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award-winning arts curator, as well as a director and cultural leader. Currently, he is the Artistic Director for Diwali in B.C. Rohit was awarded the prestigious 'Vancouver Now Representation and Inclusion Award' in 2018. He is also the recipient of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award in the Large Theatre Category for 'Significant Artistic Achievement' (2017) and recipient of the Shiamak Vancouver Community Award (by Bollywood star choreographer Shiamak Davar) in recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of Entertainment and Theatre Arts (2017).
A recent co-creator and co-director of Bard on the Beach’s All’s Well That Ends Well, Rohit Chokhani is the first South Asian of Indian descent to direct at Bard, Western Canada’s largest not-for-profit, professional Shakespeare Festival. His fresh, bold take on the production received critical acclaim and enjoyed a sold out 6-week run, entertaining over 12,000 audience members. Chokhani’s directorial debut - a reimagination of Anosh Irani’s Bombay Black - was voted one of the top 20 shows on Vancouver stages in 2017, and won the Pick of the Fringe Award at the Vancouver Fringe Festival.
Chokhani also founded Project SAT (South Asian Theatre), co-created the Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts and was a Producer-in-Residence at the National Arts Centre - English Theatre. Throughout the past eight years, Rohit Chokhani has been involved in various capacities with over 30 theatrical productions, which garnered four Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, 28 Jessie Award nominations, three Vancouver Fringe Festival Awards, and four Meta Award nominations. Rohit grew up in Bombay (Mumbai), home to Bollywood, and the centre of the Indian subcontinent’s vibrant performing arts industry. He is highly passionate about making performing arts equitable and sustainable.
DIRECTOR / WRITER
Rohit is an award winning writer and director. Learn more about this aspect of his career here:
FOUNDER / PRODUCER
Diwali in BC, which falls under the Raghupriya Arts and Culture Society ,is a new initiative founded and produced by Rohit Chokhani. This is an annual multicultural Multi-Disciplinary Inclusive festival that aims to showcase artists from diverse backgrounds and different abilities to celebrate the festival of lights during the annual Indian New Year.The third annual Diwali in BC celebrations will take place from Oct, 2019 to Nov, 2019. Learn more at diwalibc.ca
PRODUCER / DIRECTOR
The lives of an Indian exotic dancer and her embittered mother are altered when a blind stranger visits them
Learn more here:
*image from the 2018 production
Ayush Kathuria - Production Associate
Ayush Kathuria is currently a student at UBC Vancouver majoring in Psychology. His past experience is mostly related to writing a couple of street plays in Delhi on Premchand's short stories from Rangbhoomi. His work seeks to provide modern adaptation to age old folk tales, revisiting past historical figures through a different perspective and shedding new light on old tales.
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Rahul Varma - Guest Presenter
Born in India, Rahul is a playwright and artistic director of Teesri Duniya Theatre www.teesriduniya.com, which he co-founded in 1981. In 1998, with Kapil Bawa, he co-founded the theatre quarterly alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage where many of his articles have appeared. He writes both in Hindi and English, a language he acquired as an adult. Some of his recent plays are Land Where the Trees Talk, No Man’s Land, Trading Injuries (radio drama), Counter Offence, Bhopal, Truth and Treason and State of Denial. His plays have been translated into French, Italian, Hindi and Punjabi. He is honored to have worked with India’s pre-eminent artist Late Dr. Habib Tanvir.
He is a recipient of Special Juror’s Award from the Quebec Drama Federation, award for promoting interculturalism by Montreal English Critic’s Circle, and the South Asian Theatre Festival Award 2012.
Anita Majumdar - Guest Presenter
Anita is an award-winning actress, playwright and choreographer who is an acting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and holds a degree in English, Theatre and South Asian Languages from the University of British Columbia. Dancing for the last nine years, Anita's training originates in Kathak, but she has also studied Bharatnatyam and Odissi. She is also currently the in-house playwright-in-residence withNightswimming, a company here in Toronto dedicated to serving new play development and their creators. Her acting and playwriting credits are many, but most recently her self-written Bollywood musical on the issue of shadism, Same Same But Different, premiered at Theatre Passe Muraille and Alberta Theatre Projects and was nominated for two Betty Mitchell Awards including a nomination for Outstanding New Play. As well, after over a decade of touring her play, Fish Eyes, the completed series of solo shows, The Fish Eyes Trilogy, had its premiere tour across Canada last season and was published (with illustrations) by Playwrights Canada Press in January of this year. Anita is the 2013 recipient of the Governor General Protege Prize in Playwriting under the mentorship of John Murrell.
ANOSH IRANI - Past Facilitator
Anosh Irani has published three critically acclaimed novels: The Cripple and His Talismans, a national bestseller; The Song of Kahunsha, which was an international bestseller and was shortlisted for Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; and Dahanu Road, which was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize. His play Bombay Black won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, and his anthology The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. He lives in Vancouver.
Jivesh Parasram - Past Facilitator
Jivesh is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, and facilitator of Indo-Caribbean descent. His work has toured Nationally and Internationally. Jiv is the founding Artistic Producer of Pandemic Theatre, and became the Artistic Director of Rumble Theatre following three years as the Associate Artistic Producer at Theatre Passe Muraille. He was a member of the Cultural Leader Lab with the Banff Centre and Toronto Arts Council. His public service work has included collaborations with the Ad Hoc Assembly, The Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and as an advisor to the National Arts Centre. His current cultural practice centres decolonization through aesthetics.
Joyce Rosario - Guest Presenter
Joyce Rosario is currently Interim Artistic Director at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver BC, Canada. She has been with the PuSh team since 2013. Previously, Joyce spent 10 years in the Canadian dance milieu as a curator, producer and manager. Her training is in Theatre Production/Design from University of British Columbia’s Theatre program, and she was once nominated for a Jessie Richardson award for Costume Design. Her first foray in performance was as a teenage participant in ‘Turning Point’, a new genre public art project by Suzanne Lacy. Joyce is a first-generation Canadian of Filipina descent. She is privileged to live and work on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Gavan Cheema - Guest Presenter
Gavan Cheema is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has a passion for using theatre as a means to build community, celebrate diversity and spark positive change. She holds a double major from the University of British Columbia in Theatre Studies and History. Her past directing credits include a staged read of da Kink in my Hair by Trey Anthony for Stone Throw Productions, Victim Impact by Tim Carlson for Theatre Conspiracy (assistant), a staged reading of Mrs.Singh and Me by Munish Sharma for the Arts Club, Bombay Black by Anosh Irani for the Vancouver Fringe Festival (assistant), Stuck In transit by Hallie Ann Jacobson for the Brave New Play Rites Festival, Men in White by Anosh Irani for the Arts Club (assistant), and Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar for the UBC Players Club.
Meena Natrajan - Past Facilitator
Meena Natarajan is a playwright and director and the Executive and Literary Director of Pangea World Theater, a progressive, international ensemble space that creates at the intersection of art, equity and social justice. She has led the theater’s growth since it’s founding in 1995. Meena has co-curated and designed many of Pangea World Theater’s professional and community based programs. She has written at least ten full-length works for Pangea, ranging from adaptations of poetry and mythology to original works dealing with war, spirituality, personal and collective memory. Meena leads ensemble-based processes in Pangea that lead to works produced for the stage. She has also directed and dramaturged several original theater and performance art pieces. She was recently awarded the Visionary Award for mid-career leaders from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.
Dipankar Mukherjee - Past Facilitator
Dipankar Mukherjee is a professional director originally from Calcutta, India with a 25-year history of directing. He is the Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater. He co-founded Pangea World Theater, an international theater in Minneapolis that is a progressive space for arts and dialogue. His aesthetics have evolved through his commitment to social justice, equity and deep spirituality and these factors along with relevant politics form the basis of his work. As a director, he has worked in India, England, Canada and the United States. Dipankar has received the Humphrey Institute Fellowship to Salzburg and has been a Ford Foundation delegate to India and Lebanon. He is a recent recipient of the Bush Leadership Fellowship award to study non-violence and peace methodologies in India and South Africa. Dipankar was invited to visit the White House as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Delegation.