Room at the Top Open Lecture Series 2016: The Artistic Case

Amit Sharma, Associate Director of Graeae Theatre Company

Graeae is one of the leading companies that tours world-class, diverse, high impact theatre. Having received unanimous acclaim from critics and audiences at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe for directing The Solid Life of Sugar Water, which will open at the National Theatre in February 2016, Amit Sharma will make the artistic case, asking what policy achieves when drawn between growing interest and dwindling resources. His talk reflects on the rising profile and desire to work and collaborate with Deaf and disabled artists, and what impact funding cuts will have for individual artists, disabled-led theatre companies and the wider theatre world.

Amit Sharma has been Graeae’s Associate Director since 2011, and is a graduate from Graeae’s Missing Piece actor training course. In summer 2012, Amit co-directed the outdoor spectacle Prometheus Awakes (with La Fura dels Baus/co-commissioned by GDIF and SIRF), marking the first large-scale outdoor production to be artistically led by Deaf and disabled people in the UK. Also for Graeae, he directed Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man which toured both nationally and internationally and co-directed Graeae’s Rhinestone Rollers in Sequins and Snowballs with Jenny Sealey at the Southbank Centre.