Kristine Landon-Smith

From Tamasha, the award-winning theatre company that brought us East is East. Kristine Landon-Smith, Director and co-creator: joint founder and Artistic Director of Tamasha and has directed all of the company’s shows. Kristine jointly won, with Sudha Bhuchar, the 2005 Asian Women of Achievement Award for Arts and Culture and the 2010 First Women Award in the Tourism and Leisure Category. Her 1996 production, 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. Her production, Strictly Dandia, was a sell-out success at the Lyric Hammersmith in both 2004 and 2005. Kristine’s freelance credits include directing with the Royal Court Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Palace Theatre Westcliff, Nitro, Yellow Earth Theatre and with the Royal Danish Theatre, where she directed the Con:FUSIONS workshop in 2005, aimed at developing cultural diversity in Scandinavian theatre. Kristine has also been a regular guest director at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama and has also taught at East15 Acting School, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, Australia, the National School of Drama in India, Central School of Speech and Drama, London and L’Ecole Philippe Gaulier, Paris. Her first short film Midnight Feast, was screened at the 11th Raindance Film Festival. Kristine’s radio credits for BBC include A Yearning; Women of the Dust, which won CRE Race in the Media Awards; and an adaptation of Lysistrata by Ranjit Bolt for the BBC World Service. More recently, Kristine has directed The Trouble with Asian Men (artsdepot, Soho Theatre and UK tours), A Fine Balance (Hampstead Theatre and UK tour), Tamasha’s first children’s play, Child of the Divide (Polka Theatre, artsdepot and UK and US tours) and Tamasha’s first play with a youth cast, Lyrical MC (London TWAM TO PRINT Oct 24:Play anthology 24/10/2012 12:37 Page 10 11 tour). In 2008, she directed Sweet Cider, a new play by TDA writer Emteaz Hussain, the new musical Wuthering Heights (national tour March - June 2009), The House of Bilquis Bibi (national tour 2010) and most recently a showcase for The Arrival at Alchemy Festival in the Southbank Centre (April 2012) inspired by Shaun Tan's graphic novel in collaboration with Circus Space.