THE DEVI TRIPTYCH
RBT is most grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts' support of our Devi Triptych.
The Devi Triptych is a reclamation of Goddess (Devi) Culture brought to audiences in a suite of devised plays premiering in Hamilton, Ontario.
Our Cast
Actor
Navtej Sandhu
Navtej Sandhu is a Toronto-based actor, born in the United States; she is also an emerging screenwriter and singer. Her most recent acting credit include Karna in Mahabharata being directed by Ravi Jain at the Shaw Festival which shall tour to the Barbican Centre in London, England this fall. Navtej was also introduced to fight training where she holds a certification of Intermediate Actor Combatant. She hopes to be able to tell her story and amplify the voices of communities that have had their voices constantly stifled. Navtej’s goal is to continue to create and be a part of projects that she believes in, and that speak to those communities.
“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.”- Ossie Davis
Actor
Rinchen Dolma
རིན་ཆེན་སྒྲོལ་མ་|Rinchen Dolma [she/her] originates from the Himalayas and is currently based in Tkarón:to. As an emerging performer, director, playwright, dramaturge and veteran community arts practitioner, she is passionate about the intersection between storytelling, community and placemaking. Rinchen completed her 2020/21 Metcalf Foundation Performing Arts Program in Artistic Direction at Theatre Passe Muraille and recently participated in the 50th edition of The Banff Playwrights Lab.
Actor
Rose Tuong
Rose Tuong (they/them): performer who loves collaborative, multi-modal, or plain ‘ol working-together. In my work I seek to encourage the personal, political, and sensuous capacities of the collective and the individual as a means toward ushering people to their expansions. I value performance works and processes that are holistic in vantage, headed for encounters with the metaphysical and regard physical embodiment as indispensable. Some past performance credits include Every Little Nookie, Little Women (Stratford Festival), Italian Mime Suicide (Bad New Days), Other Jesus (Public Recordings, Festival TransAmériques), lulu v.7//aspects of a femme fatale (Buddies, the red light district), All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet (Canadian Stage).
Actor
Jsin Sasha
"To Win, you Have to Give In."
Jsin learned that the hard way. Now the restlessly creative actor, vocalist and songwriter is sharing that truth through his acting and music. Jsin has spent over a decade training as an actor with several coaches in the city, including David Rotenberg, Robyn Kay, Cindy Tanas, and most recently Noam Jenkins, with whom he now helps run an on camera scene study in Toronto. Jsin is deeply committed to his ongoing personal development, enabling him the self-awareness and tools to bring depth to his work. Jsin’s credits include Played, The Strain, Designated Survivor, Killjoys, The Symbol and CLAIREvoyant. In 2022, Jsin launched his second EP titled Surrender, a six-track set about his ongoing journey to self-acceptance.
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Actor
Annika Venkatesh
As a Bharatanatyam dancer and lover of all things theater, Annika is especially excited to be involved in the Devi Triptych. She is entering her second year of Nursing at McMaster University and is passionate about the many intersections of the arts and science. She was an actor in the 2023 McMaster Thespian Company production of Much Ado About Nothing, and has been recognized for her directing, acting, and sound design at National Theatre School Dramafest productions. She seizes opportunities to enhance her skills to higher levels and tell stories that ring with honesty and hope, particularly through verbatim theatre.
Actor
Ammarah Abid
Ammarah Abid is a 30 year old queer Pakistani actor and writer with a passion for storytelling. A self-taught guitarist and lyricist, she is a poignant songwriter who finds beauty and catharsis in archiving her own history in the form of music. Ammarah is seeking a career change towards the arts, and hopes to connect with other storytellers for mentorship and collaboration. She believes in building community with her peers to shift and meld her point of view with the voices of others in pursuit of creative fusion and shared exploration.
Our Creative Team
Founding Artistic Director & Writer
Radha S. Menon
Interdisciplinary artist, Menon began performing in British theatre and television in her youth. Her plays, Blackberry, Sita’s Revenge, Ganga’s Ganja, Rukmini’s Gold, Rise of the Prickly Pear, The Circus & The Washing Machine have been produced for many theatre festivals in Canada, the U.K. and India. Multi-award winner, Rukmini’s Gold will be remounted in 2022. Menon is the founding Artistic Director of Red Beti Theatre and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is editing her first novel, Death Cry of a Peacock.
Director
Natasha Kathi-Chandra
Natasha is an international theatre director, writer, dramaturg and facilitator based in London, UK and Hyderabad, India.
She is currently the Associate Director at Tara Theatre, London and most recently launched Tara Theatre's inaugural 18-25 year old Young Company , directing their show DNA , inspired by stories from the company and written by Atiha Sen Gupta.
Her credits include Associate Director on East is East at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, National and Chichester Festival Theatre, Angels in America (Fourth Monkey), The Wolves (London College of Music), It kind of looks like Doughnut (Pleasance, Curve, Wolves Arena), Office Nominated 4 Stage (Bread & Roses) & Sad about the Cows ( Tristan Bates).
In 2008 she founded a youth theatre company Ingenium Dramatics in Hyderabad to encourage young people to explore West End style theatre leading the company as Artistic Director for five years. In London, she founded an arts company Namashkar with the aim of challenging and changing roles for South Asian women both on and off stage and with her company wrote and directed The Infinite Line between Dating & Dying (White Bear & Etcetera Theatre) and Om Shanti F*ck ( Arcola, Battersea Arts Center, Camden People’s Theatre). She has also had her writing feature in Titola Dawudu x Tamasha Theatre’s Hear Me Now Monologues as well as LIT an anthology of writing by writers of colour edited by Rikki Beadle-Blair.
Alongside this, Natasha loves engaging with emerging artists, young people and the community. She has facilitated the Creative Learning Program at Park Theatre (2014-2021) and has worked with London College of Music, UAL and Fourth Monkey drama schools.
She is an Associate Director for Kali Theatre and has assistant directing credits from Stratford East, Royal Court and National.
Production Coordinator & Stage Manager
Lisa Schianella
Lisa is a visual artist that fell in love with the theatre at an early age. She graduated with honours from Humber's Theatre School (production). She has enjoyed stage managing a variety of different projects like Body So Fluorescent at Buddies In Bad Times (April 2023), the workshop of Sister Warriors with Suitcase In Point (2022), Shakespeare in Hospitals (2016-2021) and Articus Productions Weird (2015-2020)(Best of Venue Award Hamilton Fringe Festival 2018, The Cutting Edge Award Toronto Fringe Festival 2016, Best of Fest Award Ottawa Fringe Festival 2015). Coming this summer, she will be in Port Stanely for the Port Stanely Festival.
Lighting Designer
Logan Raju Cracknell
Logan Raju Cracknell is a Toronto based theatre artist specialising in theatrical design and live stream creation. Their work has taken them across the country and they are truly excited to see what journeys lie ahead. Recent works include: The Extinction Therapist (Theatre Aquarius), Alice in Wonderland (Bad Hats Theatre), Dixon Road (The Musical Stage Company), As You Like It/Dream In High Park (Canadian Stage Company), William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal and Orphans for the Czar(Crow’s Theatre).
Musician
Denzel Gordon
Denzel Gordon is a Jamaican Canadian multi-instrumentalist, actor, composer, and songwriter. With a diverse background in music and audio, stage performance, and television Denzel pushes artistic boundaries with his innovative thinking. With captivating presence and versatile skills, he leaves a lasting impact in the world of entertainment.
Music Director
Ranil Sonnadara
Ranil Sonnadara is a theatrical sound designer and composer who has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. He has won several awards for his work on musicals and plays. Born of Sri Lankan heritage and originally from the United Kingdom, Ranil moved to Canada in 1998 to pursue graduate studies in psychoacoustics and auditory neuroscience at McMaster University. He has designed sound and music
at several producing and touring venues in the UK including the West Yorkshire Playhouse, York Theatre Royal, the Manchester Apollo Theatre, Bath Theatre Royal, the Epsom Playhouse, South Hill Park Arts
Centre, as well as venues in and around London’s West End including a resident spell at the Royal National Theatre. He has also worked at several venues across North America.
Ranil has over 250 production credits. Highlights include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Barnum, Beauty
and the Beast, Cats, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Jesus Christ Superstar, King Lear, Little Shop of Horrors, Never, Peter Pan, Pirates of Penzance, Red, Rent, Rocky, Singing in the Rain, Steel City Gangster, Sweeney Todd,
The Father, The Invisible Hand, The Nether, The Sound of Music, True West, Wicked, Wind in the
Willows, and most recently The Extinction Therapist for Theatre Aquarius, Joseph for Drayton Entertainment, and Grand Magic for the Stratford Festival.
An experienced educator and researcher, Ranil is committed to training the next generation of sound designers and composers. He has taught courses on psychoacoustics, composition, lighting and sound
design at the University of Leeds, the Leeds College of Music, University College Bretton Hall, Liverpool Hope University and at McMaster University. In his “spare time”, Ranil is the Creative Director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind’s LIVELab.
Musician
Devraj Patnaik
Devraj Patnaik was trained from a young age as a dancer and percussionist and grew up with a love of music. The frequent company of musicians allowed him to internalize many core musical concepts by exposure and osmosis. Since 1999 he has composed over 14 hours of original work, the majority being Indian Classical. Additionally, he has composed music by special commission for other stage artists, as well as for television—Statues Come to Life (2008, BravoFACT)--and short film—Lover’s Leap (2009, Karam Singh)--and a documentary Remix to Rio (Ravi Steve, 2010). Between 1999 and the present, he has learned to play numerous instruments and is currently creating new works in his home recording studio.
Set Designer
Hemangi Shroff
I am a self-taught multidisciplinary visual artist from Mumbai, India now residing in Toronto. I am passionate about activism through the arts and devote my practice to exploring socio-cultural issues like representation, feminism, decolonization, and diversity and equity.
I use my visual vocabulary to convey complex layering of stories focused on culture, gender, fabrics, and jewellery through the lens of a contemporary Indian woman. My work includes ‘cultural abstraction’ acrylic paintings inspired by colours, patterns, embroideries, and weaving in Indian textiles. The predominant theme in the work I create is influenced by my upbringing in a progressive, yet traditional Indian family, where I constantly questioned societal gender roles. I delve into these issues to decode the truths of being a woman in India.
In my work, I explore how fabrics and femininity intersect in Indian culture. Interwoven patterns symbolise the complex discourse of patriarchal structures and modernism, where women struggle to find their place and voice. My work aims to decouple patriarchy from culture by celebrating women's rightful place in Indian society.
Costume Designer
Negar Nemati
Negar is an Iranian Costume Designer with more than ten years of experience. After studying Theatre at Tehran University of Fine Arts, she developed her skills under the supervision of well-known theatre directors. Through the years, Negar has gained the knowledge and experience to design memorable characters both in the theatre and movie industry.
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Two time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi and internationally acclaimed theatre director Amirreza Koohestani are among many great directors with whom she has collaborated as a costume designer.
As a theatre costume designer, Negar has worked in prestigious theatres in Iran, Germany and Canada.
Based in Canada since 2016, Negar has been a proud member of CAFTCAD and IATSE 873 .
Choreographer
Ellora Patnaik
Some of her projects include Sort Of, Schitt’s Creek, Kim’s Convenience, Hudson & Rex, Talent Drivers, Murdoch Mysteries, Spinning Out, Titans, Coroner, and Orphan Black. A graduate and former company member of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (NYC), Ellora has performed in a diverse quantity of theatre productions, including Standing On My Knees, Nagamandala, Umrao Jaan Ada, The Penelopiad, Romeo and Juliet, Acha Bacha, Her2, Much Ado About Nothing & Free Outgoing.