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India’s pioneering horror film festival Wench is set to unleash its fifth edition at Mumbai venues with British psychological thriller “The Eye,” toplining Shruti Haasan, who will participate in a post-screening Q&a. Running Feb. 27-March 2, the fest continues its mission to spotlight female voices in genre cinema, with women helmers accounting for 35 of the 42 selected films.

Festival founder Sapna Bhavnani is expanding the event’s footprint with a Kolkata edition while also launching Terror Talkies, billed as India’s first horror portal. The lineup boasts partnerships with genre heavyweights Fantasia and Imagine Fantastic Film Festival, including Oscar-nominated short “I’m Not a Robot” as part of the Fantasia collaboration.

Closing night honors go to Ishan Shukla’s IFFR winner “Schirkoa – In Lies We Trust.” The fest will also present masterclasses by Riksundar Banerjee and Vishal Furia, plus an art installation titled “Silent Skies” spotlighting avian conservation,...

Casarotto Ramsay & Associates has brought in two agents including one who reps the likes of Essex Serpent writer Anna Symon and Get Millie Black’s Lydia Adetunji.

Tanya Tillett and Kara Fitzpatrick have joined as Senior Agent and Theater Agent respectively. Tillett, who has previously worked for The Agency and the Knight Hall Agency, reps the likes of Symon, Adetunji and Grace Ofori-Attah, who wrote recent James Norton-starrer Playing Nice. She will report to Casarotto Head of Film & Television Jodi Shields.

Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick has joined from 42 where she worked as Literary Manager. She has brought her existing clients to Casarotto including Roy Williams (Death of England trilogy), Tanika Gupta (A Tupperware of Ashes) and Dipo Baruwa-Etti (The Clinic). She will report to Head of Theatre Mel Kenyon.

Tillett said Casarotto has a “dedication to the industry and to their clients’ shapes everything they do,” while Fitzpatrick called Casarotto’s offer “a huge privilege.

More than 2,000 figures from the UK’s arts and culture world have signed an open letter calling for the immediate cessation of Israel’s blockade and bombing of Gaza.

“We are witnessing a crime and a catastrophe. Israel has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, and cut off the supply of water, power, food and medicine to 2.3 million Palestinians,” reads the letter. “In the words of the Un’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, ‘the spectre of death’ is hanging over the territory.”

The signatories include acting stars Tilda Swinton, Charles Dance, Steve Coogan, Miriam Margolyes, Peter Mullan, Maxine Peake and Khalid Abdalla.

The Israeli action is in retaliation for a brutal terror attack out of Gaza by Hamas on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people and resulted in the taking of 199 hostages.

More than 2,750 Palestinians are reported to have died in Israel’s subsequent bombing campaign, while electricity, food and...

Exclusive: In an eye-catching acquisition, 42 has bought respected UK talent and literary agency Dalzell and Beresford, we can reveal.

Veteran British agent Simon Beresford has joined the LA and London-based management and production company as a Partner and Manager and his roster is moving over with him.

Clients include Ralph Fiennes, Matthew Goode, Sir Simon Russell Beale, Ciarán Hinds, Indira Varma, Lindsay Duncan, Giles Terera, Ken Stott, Patrick Marber, Leslie Caron, Jamie Campbell Bower, Nathaniel Parker, Simon Callow, Jim Norton, Matthew McNulty, Julian Clary, Dame Siân Phillips, Fra Fee, Nigel Havers, Sinéad Cusack and Andrei Konchalovsky.

Beresford’s team will also be joining him at 42, including Vicki Oliver as a Manager and Kitty Johnson. Kara Fitzpatrick, who runs Dalzell and Beresford’s literary department, brings with her clients including Roy Williams, Tanika Gupta, Dawn Sievewright, Paddy Campbell and John Donnelly.

Dalzell and Beresford was set up in 1966 by the legendary UK rep Larry Dalzell.

More than 3,500 workers in the British film and TV industry have signed an open letter calling for senior figures and decision makers to make several "strategic commitments" to reshape the landscape of the sector and "tackle structural and systemic racism."

The letter comes a week after the Black Film Collective issued a similar statement to Hollywood, with its creators — including producer Nisha Parti (The Boy With the Top Knot), actor-writer Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me), actor Indira Varma (Patrick Melrose), playwright Tanika Gupta, actor-director Pooja Ghai and presenter Anita Rani — having revised it ...

More than 3,500 workers in the British film and TV industry have signed an open letter calling for senior figures and decision makers to make several "strategic commitments" to reshape the landscape of the sector and "tackle structural and systemic racism."

The letter comes a week after the Black Film Collective issued a similar statement to Hollywood, with its creators — including producer Nisha Parti (The Boy With the Top Knot), actor-writer Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me), actor Indira Varma (Patrick Melrose), playwright Tanika Gupta, actor-director Pooja Ghai and presenter Anita Rani — having revised it ...

More than 3,500 members of the U.K.’s film and TV industry have signed an open letter calling on gatekeepers to make a number of “strategic commitments” to reshape the landscape and improve representation.

Organizers of the letter — which comes just one week after the U.S. Black Film Collective issued a similar open letter to Hollywood — include “The Boy with the Topknot” producer Nisha Parti, actor and writer Meera Syal, “Patrick Melrose” actor Indira Varma, playwright Tanika Gupta, actor-director Pooja Ghai and presenter Anita Rani.

The group credits the U.S. Black Film Collective’s initial “powerful and eloquent” open letter, sent last week and signed by hundreds of supporters. “As the U.K. TV and Film industry suffers from the same lack of diverse representation in front of and behind the camera, we, a group of women of color working in the industry, have revised it to address...

Television isn’t hurting for lack of angry women right now, but it’s still startling to make direct eye contact with them as one must with “Snatches.” BBC America’s new series of short films — eight in total — honors the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote in England by centering furious, aching, excited, miserable women from various crucial points in the country’s recent history. Entirely written and directed by women, each episode of “Snatches” (an unfortunate double entendre of a title) stars actors like Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”), Antonia Thomas (“The Good Doctor”), and Siobhan Finneran (“Downton Abbey”); each holds their own on a sparse set, giving lengthy monologues directly to camera.

While it makes logistical sense that BBC America aired all eight back-to-back (each installment runs an efficient 12 to 15 minutes long), watching “Snatches” all at once is a jarring, even upsetting experience — but then again, that’s the point.

The winners of the influential 17th annual Asian Achievers Awards were celebrated amid a ray of Bollywood stars, glittering celebrities and high profile dignitaries on Friday September 22nd at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane. Winners include, Bollywood star Farhan Akhtar for International Personality of the Year (Male); Playwright Tanika Gupta MBE for Achievement in Media; Surinder Arora for Business Person of the Year; with the Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Lord Indarjit Singh Cbe, for his immense achievements and contribution to harmonising race relations in Britain.

Hosted by Bollywood singer, actress and model, Raageshwari and former Eastenders star actor Nitin Ganatra, the awards saw over £155,000 raised for charity partner, Akshaya Patra, which works to eradicate classroom hunger and facilitate childhood education by serving freshly cooked, nourishing lunches to 1.6 million school children across India every day. The event also highlighted the great strides made in the fields of Media,...

Bollywood actor, producer, director and singer, Farhan Akhtar will be attending the 17th annual Asian Achievers Awards, tying in with the theme of this year’s event, which centres around the fields of Media, Art and Culture. The awards will be held on Friday 22nd September and celebrate South Asian excellence at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane. Bollywood singer, actress and model, Raageshwari will join former Eastenders star Nitin Ganatra to host the glittering ceremony.

This year, women have stormed the 17th annual Asian Achievers Awards nominees list, with 22 of the 36 shortlisted contenders being female. It is one of the few times that any awards event, Asian or otherwise, has women outnumbering male nominees. The nominees include, Vanita Patel MBE of Anti-Slavery International; England cricketer Haseeb Hameed; playwright, Tanika Gupta MBE; ground-breaking chemist, Sir Shankar Balasubramanian Frs and BBC journalist, Tina Daheley – full list below.

Since launching, The...

Judge Tanika Gupta and Jarman award winner John Smith reflect on the value of prizes and competition in culture

The award judge: Tanika Gupta

Playwrights don't often get recognition for their work. Apart from anything else, we tend to be fairly anonymous people, sat behind our laptop screens, tearing at our hair as we wrestle with words, scenes, structure and dialogue, cooking up those ingredients for a piece of live performance. We are not the beautiful actor at ease with our physical bodies on stage, instantly recognised by an adoring public, and we may not be on public display, but without us there would be very little theatre.

I felt privileged to be asked to be a judge for the 2013 Bruntwood prize for playwriting. Having won some awards myself, I know what a difference it can make for new writers – enhancing their self-belief, motivating them to keep writing and in...

Elegant and meticulous actor whose work ranged from Shakespeare to EastEnders

Paul Bhattacharjee, who has been found dead aged 53, was one of the country's leading British Asian actors, a key member of Jatinder Verma's Tara Arts, a regular at the Royal Shakespeare Company – he was last seen in the West End last year, playing Benedick opposite Meera Syal in the RSC's Much Ado About Nothing – and a popular television and film actor whose roles included Inzamam in the BBC soap EastEnders, an immigration officer called Mohammed in Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and parts in the Bond movie Casino Royale (2006) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011).

He was tall, slim and naturally funny, always meticulous in his movement and perfect in his articulation. He reminded me of an elegant bird – a heron, perhaps, or a flamingo. His eyes twinkled as much as they burned. He slowed things down, rather than speeded them up,...

Vibrant actor who achieved success in Bollywood films, West End musicals and on Coronation Street

Sophiya Haque's performance in Peter Nichols's Privates on Parade, which opened last month at the Noël Coward theatre, marked a high point in the beautiful British Asian actor's West End career, launched 10 years ago with Andrew Lloyd Webber's presentation of Bombay Dreams. As the lustrous Welsh Eurasian Sylvia Morgan, Haque held her own among the knobbly-kneed privates, led by Simon Russell Beale's outrageous Captain Terri Dennis. However, illness forced her to withdraw from the production before the end of the year and she has died of cancer at the age of 41.

Born in Portsmouth, Haque was the youngest of three daughters. She was raised by her mother, Thelma, a divorced schoolteacher. She attended Priory comprehensive school and took dance lessons from the age of two and a half at Mary Forrester's...

British South Asian drama has been associated with sparkly saris and arranged-marriage melodrama for too long. It's time to acknowledge the full breadth of its talent

Eight years ago this month, I was in rehearsals at Birmingham Rep for Behzti (Dishonour), a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti that depicted a rape in a Sikh temple. By 20 December the production was forced to close early, as a result of violent protests. The police were unable to guarantee the safety of the actors, audience or theatre staff, so the management had no option but to stop the show. It was a terrifying and deeply upsetting time, made even more tragic to us – a company of South Asian artists. Quite apart from the death threats against the playwright, there was no other play on at the time by a South Asian writer. This made the enforced silence even more painful. We were struggling to get our voices heard.

Peacock, London

You could translate "wah! wah!" – how some Indian audiences express their pleasure at a performance – as "bravo!". Sadly, there's far more woe than wah in this feeble attempt to create a British Bollywood musical, which seems to owe more to a dull episode of EastEnders than it does to rich traditions elsewhere. The costumes often have a bright, jewelled swagger, but the rest of Keith Khan's designs, including what appears to be a papier-mache red London bus, look cheap and tacky, as if the budget had unexpectedly run out.

As is so often the case with unsuccessful musicals, though, the real fault lies in the book and lack of rigorous dramaturgy. Even the framing device is weak: when Bindi's husband goes away for a few days, he implores her not to spend all her time watching Bollywood movies. But as soon as he's out of the door, she's in front of the flatscreen,...

From Lorca and Euripides in a festival of chaos to breathtaking circus in a cathedral, our critics pick the best theatrical experiences of the spring

A Marvellous Year for Plums

Long before Iraq, Britain's 1956 invasion of Suez divided the nation and destroyed the reputation of the Pm. In those days it was Sir Anthony Eden, described by a colleague as "half mad baronet and half beautiful woman" and now played by Anthony Andrews in a new piece by Hugh Whitemore. Mb Chichester Festival theatre (01243 781 312), 11 May to 2 June. cft.org.uk

Posh

Time should have given new traction to Laura Wade's play about an elite Oxford dining club filled with arrogant young toffs who presume they are born to rule. First seen at the Royal Court shortly before the last election, it was thought by some to offer an exaggerated portrait of upper-class swagger. Now Lyndsey Turner's production, with many of the original cast,...