Artist Takeover: Spring 2025

About

“As South Asian creatives based in Greater Manchester, we bring a collaborative approach that draws from our diverse backgrounds in theatre, film, radio, and poetry. Over the years, we have consistently produced work on mid-scale platforms across theatre, film, radio, and poetry, earning recognition for our dedication to telling diverse, impactful stories. However, as South Asian artists, we have often felt constrained by the lack of opportunities to experiment on a larger scale.

For us, stepping into this vast space is more than just a career milestone, it’s a chance to redefine what is possible for artists like us. It provides the platform to test bold, cross-disciplinary ideas and to craft work that is ‘good enough to try and safe enough to fail.’

This is us taking the leap from mid-scale to large-scale, to experiment with ideas we’ve been nurturing, and to create work that is as ambitious as the space itself.

This takeover is not just about audiences observing a story but about them being a part of it.“

Gitika Buttoo and afshan d’souza-lodhi

afshan d’souza-lodhi

afshan d’souza-lodhi was born in Dubai and forged in Manchester. She is a writer of scripts and poetry. Her work has been performed and translated into numerous languages across the world. afshan was a LabFellow for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University and took her one-woman show How To Eat Mangoes to Washington DC in 2022. She is currently working on developing the show as a feature film with Early Development Funding from BFI.

afshan has been writer-in-residence for Sky Studios, New Writing North, Royal Exchange Theatre, Warner Bros discovery and is this year's writer-in-residence for Bluebird Pictures. afshan was one of the first to receive The National Theatre's Peter Shaffer award in 2022.

afshan was selected as a mentee for the BAFTA BFI Flare programme, and has developed a TV series with Sky Studios. She is developing multiple TV projects – one of which was recently selected for the Sky Table Reads Programme. A TV pilot she wrote called Chop Chop, based on her stage play with the same name, was selected as part of the second annual #MuslimList, a curated list of the most promising unmade scripts from Muslim writers in Hollywood that reside on The Black List.

She has just finished filming her short film which has been funded by the BFI, directed by Gitika Bhutto.

As well as her own writing, afshan is keen to develop other younger and emerging artists and sits on the board of Pie Radio and is co-chair of the board of Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester. She is also the WGGB Regional chair of Manchester and Lancashire.

Instagram / Website

Gitika Buttoo

Gitika is a Queer British South Asian Director from Yorkshire, currently based in Manchester.

She directs theatre, film and radio nationally. Her recent film Before I Do was commissioned by the British Film Institute, selected by BFI Flare Film Festival (The largest LGBTQ+ Film Festival in Europe) amongst others and will be screened at BFI Southbank in London 2025.

She has been Artistic Associate of Birmingham Opera Company and LUNG Theatre Company. She is a guest lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, LIPA and ALRA and winner of the JMK Trust award. She was picked to be one of Headlong Theatre's Origins Artists and won a bursary to develop her practice.

Recent Theatre Credits: The Borrowers (The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster); The Tempest (Storyhouse, Chester); Common Ground (Mikron Theatre, UK Tour); ROAD and Love N Stuff (Oldham Coliseum); The Father & The Assassin (National Theatre); The Jungle Book (Storyhouse, Chester); Disproportionately Affected (Tara Theatre); The Jungle Book (Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre); Runaway (Young Vic Theatre); Northern Girls (Pilot Theatre); The Caucasian Chalk Circle (National Theatre and CAST, Doncaster); Trojan Horse (UK tour); Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Birmingham Opera Company); Beyond Shame (Derby Theatre) East is East (The Octagon Theatre) Ode to Leeds (Leeds Playhouse)