Wuthering Heights

Deepak Verma – Original Concept and Book

Deepak trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London as an actor. Deepak is a well-known face in the world of British television and has appeared in Doctors and Holby City amongst others. He is best known for his role as Sanjay in the BBC soap EastEnders. Deepak's writing credits include: The Fall of Kalyug for the Royal Court in London; Bandit Queen, Scorching Winds and Rama and Sita for BBC Radio 4; Amongst The Mango Trees for Leicester Haymarket; and Ghostdancing for Tamasha which toured nationally and internationally. Deepak is also Managing Director of Pukkanasha Films - a company which develops diverse commercial features - and is currently developing film projects in the UK, India and the US.

Felix Cross - Composer and Lyricist

Felix has been Artistic Director of Nitro since 1996. His credits for Nitro as either composer, playwright, lyricist or director include: Up Against The Wall; The Wedding Dance; An African Cargo; An Evening of Soul Food; Mass Carib; The Evocation of Papa Mas’ (with Told by an Idiot); High Heeled Parrotfish (with Talawa and Theatre Royal Stratford East); Slamdunk; Passports to the Promised Land; Tricksters’ Payback and ICED. Away from Nitro, Felix has written several musicals including Blues For Railton (Albany Empire), Glory! (Temba) and has composed music for over seventy stage, TV and radio productions including: Macbeth, Talking to Terrorists, O Go My Man, The Overwhelming; Convicts Opera (Out of Joint); Ghostdancing, Ryman & the Sheikh, Strictly Dandia, A Fine Balance (Tamasha); The Bottle Imp, Jekyll & Hyde (Major Road); and Agathon (Palace Theatre Westcliffe).

Sheema Mukherjee - Composer

Sheema has roots in both the western tradition and Indian classical music. She has collaborated with artists such Natacha Atlas, Transglobal Underground, Noel Gallagher, Cornershop, Bulgarian Folk singer Yanke, Simon Emmerson from the Afro-Celts, and UK saxophonist Courtney Pine. Sheema has appeared at the The World Music Festival (Chicago), Montreux Jazz Festival and the Olympia-Halle (Munich). As a composer, recent work includes compositions for the cross-genre performance collective, Cascade: Beyond Eight Bars; co-writing with Mercan Dede for his album Su; an improvisation with recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey in Westminster Abbey for Commonwealth Day; and a creative development role in composition and songwriting in Beijing, Hong Kong and Gateshead as part of the PRS Foundation and Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong Creative Exchange Project. Larger scale work includes two new pieces of theatre (Non-Contact Time and Gluey and the Lion) which formed part of Northern Exposure at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Kristine Landon-Smith – Director

Kristine is joint founder and Artistic Director of Tamasha and has directed all of the company’s shows. Her production of East is East was nominated for an Olivier award, and her original production of Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and A Funeral won the Barclays Theatre Award for Best New Musical. Other directing credits include plays for the Royal Court, Bristol Old Vic, Palace Theatre Westcliff, Nitro, Yellow Earth Theatre and the Royal Danish Theatre. Kristine has taught at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, the National School of Drama in India, Central School of Speech and Drama and L’Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris. Her short film Midnight Feast was screened at the 11th Raindance Film Festival. Radio credits include: A Yearning, Women of the Dust (Radio 4; both winners of CRE Race in the Media Awards) and Lysistrata (BBC World Service). Kristine jointly won, with Sudha Bhuchar, the 2005 Asian Women of Achievement Award for Arts and Culture.

Sue Mayes – Designer

Sue trained at Central School of Art and Design (Central St. Martins) in the1970s. Her career started at Ipswich Rep from where she went on to residences at the Belgrade Theatre in Education Coventry, Contact Theatre Manchester and The Everyman Theatre Liverpool. Freelance work has included designs for RSC, Talawa Theatre Company, Bristol Old Vic and Theatre Royal Stratford East. Recent designs include The Killing of Sister George (Derby Playhouse) and Office Party (Edinburgh Festival). Sue has designed all of Tamasha’s previous productions.

John Rigby – Musical Supervisor & Orchestrations

John has worked with many of the country’s leading orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the Halle and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Major West End musical theatre credits include: Marguerite (Theatre Royal Haymarket); The Drowsy Chaperone (Novello); The Producers (Theatre Royal Drury Lane); Sinatra at the Palladium (Palladium); The Phantom of the Opera (Her Majesty’s); Les Miserables (Palace); The Pirates of Penzance (Savoy). As Musical Supervisor: Terry Pratchett’s Only You Can Save Mankind (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Peter Pan (Savoy), The King and I (UK tour); and The Producers (UK tour). As a composer, arranger and orchestrator, he has produced music for the Centenary Celebrations for the City of Bradford; The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds and Exeter Northcott); Peter Pan (Savoy); The Pirates of Penzance (Savoy); The King and I (UK tour and Denmark); Dick Whittington (Watford Palace Theatre); and a variety of soloists and orchestras.

Chandru – Orchestrations and Arrangements

With a credits list that includes George Harrison, The Cure, Ravi Shankar, Talvin Singh, Björk, Pepe Habichuela and Nitin Sawhney, it is of little surprise that Chandru is one of the most in-demand violinists and string arrangers of his genre and generation. Chandru worked alongside Ravi Shankar on George Harrison’s Chants of India album as well as adding his own violin to – amongst many others – The Cure’s Numb and Talvin Singh’s Mercury Music Prize winning OK. Through Bollywood Strings his arrangements have featured prominently on albums by Frou Frou, Kiki Dee, Pepe Habichuela and Nitin Sawhney. Nowadays based in Britain and India, Chandru runs SA Digital Recordings in Bangalore where the majority of his unique string arrangements are recorded, using the finest orchestral and individual players. It is not uncommon for Chandru to record with string-strengths of over 100 players to enable him to create his inimitable sound. www.bollywoodstrings.com

Nikki Woollaston - Choreographer

Nikki trained under Jackie Mitchell and Donald McLennan at The London Studio Centre and is Assistant to the Head of Jazz at Millennium Dance 2000. Her choreographic and musical staging credits include Marguerite (Haymarket Theatre); Kismet (English National Opera); The King And I (UK tour); Nymph Errant (Minerva Theatre Chichester); The Vivien Ellis Awards (Her Majesty’s Theatre London); and Dick Whittington, Cinderella, Aladdin and Jack and The Beanstalk (Watford Palace Theatre). As Associate and Resident Choreographer, her credits include Oliver (London Palladium); Cats (New London Theatre); Anything Goes (Theatre Royal Drury Lane and Royal National Theatre); On the Town (English National Opera); and Sinatra (London Palladium and UK tour). Nikki also worked as part of the choreographic team on the Commonwealth Games, Manchester 2002 for both the opening and closing ceremonies.

Peter Harrison – Lighting Designer

Peter trained at RADA. Recent lighting designs have included The Doubtful Guest for Hoipolloi at Watford Palace and the Theatre Royal Plymouth, The Viewing Room at the Arts Theatre, London, Orestes for Shared Experience, Hallelujah for Theatre503, and Betwixt! and Shadowmaster for the Kings Head. Other designs have included Fingerprint for The Shout at the Linbury Studio, Up from the Waste at the Soho Theatre, Romeo and Juliet at The New Wolsey, Ipswich, Once We Were Mothers for the Orange Tree in Richmond, and productions for Pimlico Opera, Cambridge Arts Theatre, the Warehouse Theatre Croydon and Southwark Playhouse. His dance lighting includes work with Ballet Central, LINK Dance, Intoto Dance Company and Michael Popper.

Mike Furness - Sound Designer

Recent theatre sound designs include: Entertaining Mr Sloane (West End); Deepcut (Traverse /Trycycle); On Emotion (Soho Theatre); Fantastic Mr Fox (Open Air Theatre Regents Park); The Changeling (ETT / Nottingham Playhouse); On Religion and Someone Else’s Shoes (Soho Theatre). Other credits include All’s Well That Ends Well and As You Like It (RSC); Blues In The Night; The Witches; Ladyday; The BFG (West End); and Mother Courage (National Theatre). He has also designed sound for Birmingham Rep, Manchester Library, The Kings Head, The Tricycle, Paines Plough, Theatre Royal Stratford East and Brighton and Edinburgh Festivals. This is his ninth sound design for Tamasha.

Jill Green CDG – Casting Director

Jill is a member of the Casting Directors Guild of Great Britain and Ireland. She began her theatre career in stage management with Chicken Shed Theatre Company. West End credits include: Jersey Boys (Prince Edward Theatre); The Producers (Theatre Royal Drury Lane and UK tours); Sinatra at the Palladium (Palladium); Jack and the Beanstalk (Barbican); Bad Girls (Garrick Theatre); Aladdin (Old Vic); Vagina Monologues (Wyndhams Theatre); Contact (Queens Theatre); Thoroughly Modern Millie (Shaftesbury Theatre); Fosse (Prince of Wales & tour). Regional credits and tours: Oklahoma!, Carousel and Music Man (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Three Musketeers (Bristol Old Vic); Much Ado About Nothing (Liverpool Everyman); Promises Promises (Sheffield Crucible); Fosse (European and international tours); Cats (UK tour); On Your Toes (Japan); Anything Goes (Grange Park Opera); West Side Story (UK tours 2000 & 2001). Film credits include Beyond the Sea (co-casting; director Kevin Spacey; choreographer Rob Ashford).

Sudha Bhuchar - Additional Text

Sudha is joint founder and Artistic Director of Tamasha. She most recently played Rabia in Sweet Cider at the Arcola Theatre, other theatre includes Dina in A Fine Balance (Hampstead Theatre and tour). Television includes Murder, EastEnders and Casualty. Sudha plays Zainab Jilani on the BBC Asian Network soap, Silver Street, and has also narrated two Book at Bedtimes (BBC Radio 4). Writing credits for Tamasha include Balti Kings (with Shaheen Khan) , Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and A Funeral, Strictly Dandia, A Fine Balance (with Kristine Landon-Smith) and Child of the Divide, which was named Best Kids Show of 2006 by Time Out. Other writing credits with Shaheen Khan include: Girlies and Balti Kings (Radio 4), and Doctors (BBC). They also wrote a short film Midnight Feast, screened at the 11th Raindance Film Festival. Sudha jointly won, with Kristine Landon-Smith, the 2005 Asian Women of Achievement Award for Arts and Culture.