Pooja Sivaraman occupies the unique, intersectional position of creating work that connects contemporary Indian voices to an avid South Asian diaspora in the UK. Formerly Creative Producer at Homegrown, she now works at Soho Theatre (London) where she takes on fostering cultural exchange and dialogue between two countries and their distinct creative ecosystems. As an artist, she possesses the fluid disposition and innate balance of someone who can sit both inside and outside of a play, traveling deep into the interiors of a text while never entirely abandoning or turning her back on the audience for whom it will be brought to life on stage. And then, moulded by her own identity as a playwright, is her recognition and understanding of the often separate if not distant worlds and realities of artists and institutions, rife with their inherent challenges and limitations.

We are at a moment which bears witness to the rapid ascent of culture as a high currency in story telling. Amongst those at the forefront of this rise, across various mediums and art forms – film, television, music, drama, literature – are young, influential voices from the global South Asian collective. Whether it is a TV show like Riz Ahmed’s Bait, the emergence of independent filmmakers like Payal Kapadia and Rohan Kanawade who are making waves at the Cannes Film Festival, or Arooj Aftab as the first Pakistani artist to with a Grammy Award — South Asian voices are taking centre stage in mainstream media. Pooja steps into this global movement as someone who is poised to create more pathways within the realm of theatre. While her practice encounters issues of sustainability and access, and striving to bridge the chasm between individual talent and the wider industry, it must also confront the question of what greater, more meaningful possibilities might lie in the reimagining of its existing systems. 

I spoke to Pooja about the projects and partnerships she has worked on across titles and time, the significance of international exchange in a globalized world and culture economy, and the peculiarities of theatre-making.

You described your role as a dramaturg as someone who “makes the play more itself”, but interpretation is such an integral part of creative work; how do you ensure that the play is being developed in the direction it’s meant to?

The definition of a dramaturg is extremely fluid. In my case, it’s someone who can serve the needs of the writer, the director, the theatre building I work in, and its audiences. That’s a lot of moving parts to juggle, so my approach to ensuring the play is becoming more itself is by  having a very frank conversation with the writer and agreeing upon a common north star for the play. The journey towards that star will likely be non-linear, messy, and emotional - so as long as the writer and I both know where we are going I can make sure we’re on the right path.

 You’ve worked extensively between the UK and India, can you tell us a little about the wider cultural shifts that have enabled such exchange between these two creative ecosystems?

There are a few wider shifts at play. Firstly, a more globalized South Asian diaspora and a new generation who are eager to connect with the profound traffic of cultural exchange between both countries. There was a time when I was told that the plays I wrote set in India would ‘sit more comfortably in white homes than in brown homes in the UK’, because British Asian audiences were more concerned with British Asian stories. I don’t think that is now the case, and my work over the last few years is testament to that change. 

During the pandemic, I put on a Zoom production of my play The Grand March with Fresh Lime Soda productions (New York) which enabled a creative collaboration between South Asian artists across the United States, the UK, and India. The post-show discussion space was ripe with points of connection and disagreement, which to me was a strong indicator of the need for shared spaces across the South Asian diaspora. 

Secondly, there is rapidly growing infrastructure for theatre across India. Look at the NMACC in Bombay, the BRIJ in Delhi, and Prestige Centre for Performing Arts in Bangalore. Theatres are being built in response to consumer demand. We are guzzling through narratives at an incredible pace, but little support is given to the artists creating that content. That is the gap I’m trying to fill. 

I do also believe that people want to tell their stories more than ever before. I co-run the Verity Bargate Award, Soho Theatre’s flagship new writing award, which this year received a record number of 2,100 play submissions from writers across the UK and Ireland. The population of people from these regions is roughly half the population of Maharashtra alone, so can you imagine just how many stories from India are waiting to be told? That thought is genuinely what gets me out of bed in the morning.

And what would you say either side – speaking of the UK and India – has to gain or lose from each other given that you have worked intimately in both places?

Creative exchange happens at the edges, which is facilitated so well by the medium of theatre because they are live, community spaces. They are designed to invite people in. When a show begins, it’s the house that is open. Working within this exchange feels very meaningful because it is a conversation that sits on the fringes of the mainstream in some way, but bringing them into the theatre means that people from both sides are physically present, they’re having post-show chats at the bar downstairs, they’re meeting other artists at the bar - we’ve created an edge. 

The UK has an incredible amount of infrastructure and government funding dedicated towards the arts. While I think the creative industries in India could benefit from some of these frameworks, I also think artists in India aren’t waiting for the space to create work, they’re taking it. The UK could benefit from adopting some of that jugaad. 

What kind of stories do you feel are emerging as this point of connection?

The most exciting projects I’ve worked on have been multi-lingual pieces of theatre which platform queer South Asian stories. In 2025 I dramaturged the play Period Parrrty which is an English-Tamil coming of age rom-com that uses the rich, seldomly told stories of queerness within Hindu mythology to garnish a story of self-discovery as a trans Tamil teenager in the UK. In 2024 I supported bringing Patchworks Ensemble’s The Gentlemen’s Club, India’s first drag king show to Soho Theatre in partnership with the NCPA, which transported Londoners directly into a smokey drag bar in Juhu. As theatre does, that feeling spilled out onto the Soho bar and streets outside the theatre where London’s finest and weirdest drag artists were sharing queer imaginations over cigarettes with Indian’s funniest drag iterations of Shammi Kapoor and Justin Timberlake. 

Both shows have lived well beyond the confines of their theatre spaces. They have, in their own ways, generated so much space for new artistic ideation, self-discovery, and healing. Shows like these are what fuel my belief that theatre should continue to travel, and it’s our collective responsibility as South Asian artists to maintain the bridges that enable such connection. 

Niya Shahdad is a writer from Kashmir. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Indian Express, The Wire (India), and Harper's Magazine. 

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