Indhu Rubasingham

Soon after graduating Hull University, she won an Arts Council Bursary to work as an assistant director at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, where she assisted director Mike Leigh and worked on a range of theatre from pantomime and musicals to new writing plays.[3] She then went on to work as an associate director at the Gate Theatre, the Young Vic, and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.[4]

Freelance directing work includes productions at the National Theatre (in 2015 Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Motherfucker with the Hat as part of Rufus Norris' inaugural season[5]), West End, the Royal Court (including Belong, Disconnect, Free Outgoing, Lift Off, Clubland, The Crutch and Sugar Mummies), Almeida Theatre (including Ruined [6]), Chichester Festival Theatre (including Secret Rapture, Romeo & Juliet, and The Misanthrope), Hampstead Theatre, Birmingham Rep Theatre (including an adaptation of the Ramayana for Birmingham Rep which went on to perform at the National Theatre)[7], Liverpool Everyman, Theatre Royal, Stratford East and St Ann's Warehouse, New York. She has also worked in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Uganda and India.[8][9]

She has also directed radio plays for BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 3 and the BBC World Service.[10]

Indhu Rubasingham succeeded Nicolas Kent as Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre in 2012. Rubasingham's inaugural production was Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti, which won an Evening Standard Award and a Critics' Circle Award,[11][12] the play is based on the story of Ira Aldridge, the first black actor to play Othello on a London stage in 1833.

Rubasingham directed Moira Buffini's Handbagged in autumn 2013, where it won an Olivier Award for 'Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre'[13] and transferred to the West End in 2014 with a subsequent National Tour in 2015.[14] Handbagged was also nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy.[15]

Other productions as artistic director directed by Rubasingham include Paper Dolls, The House That Will Not Stand, Multitudes, A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes and The Invisible Hand.

In August 2014, while she was artistic director, she was at the centre of an Antisemitism controversy over the funding of the UK Jewish Film Festival intended to have been held the theatre. ^[16]

In 2017, Indhu was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours List.[16]

Also in 2017, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Hull.

Other awards include the Asian Women of Achievement Award[17] and the Liberty Human Rights Award.[18]

Rubasingham directed The Great Wave by Francis Turnly at the National Theatre in spring 2018.[19]

In April 2018, under her artistic leadership, the theatre changed its name from the Tricycle to the Kiln Theatre.[20]