Sumerah Srivastav is a  playwright, screenwriter, librettist and media professional.

Having started out in indie feature film & TV production (Company Pictures, Alliance Atlantis, Irish Screen and Producer Allan Niblo), she then launched and ran an award winning commercial radio station targeting London’s Asian youth audiences (Club Asia) for which she won numerous awards including a Women in Public Life award and an Asian Woman of Achievement award.

Since embarking on a writing career Sumerah has been associated with a number of new writing programmes such as the Royal Court Critical Mass and Studio writers’ programme, Orange Tree’s writers’ collective, Stratford East’s Musical Theatre Initiative and World Theatre Lab.

Sumerah is currently under commission to the BBC to write for EastEnders and is represented by Kitson Press Associates.

Sumerah is passionate about challenging the lack of diversity in British theatre and is dedicated to developing diverse work that BAME artists want to engage with and audiences everywhere want to see.

Sumerah’s new play VEILED & VINEGAR will be the inaugural production of the newly formed SayWhat Theatre

This new company, to which Sumerah is attached as Associate Writer, has support from Tamasha and Redbridge Drama Centre and is dedicated to developing a new generation of diverse theatre-makers and equipping them with the professional and creative skills to tell the stories that reflect and represent their contemporaries - the typically 'hard to reach' young diverse audiences.

Our hope is that by engaging with these new artists and audiences they will develop a life-long relationship with theatre and that the touring of SayWhat’s grass roots, accessible, community based theatre work will ultimately contribute to better BAME representation on, off and in front of Britain's theatrical stages in the future.

Sumerah’s past theatre credits include:

2015 – The Fairy King - Short monologue as part of festival showcase at the Orange Tree Theatre, directed by Guy Jones.

2014 – Veiled & Vinegar - A short play originally commissioned by Tamasha Theatre Company with development support from Old Vic New Voices and Unity Theatre. Performed at Redbridge Drama Centre & Contact Theatre and directed by Jane Fallowfield. This short forms the basis of the new play (of the same name) commission by Redbridge Drama Centre for showcase production in November 2015 to be directed by Maria Pereira.

2014 – Space Invaders - Short play response to George Bernard Shaw’s, Widower’s Houses at the Orange Tree Theatre directed by Rania Jumaily.

2013 – Bollywood Rose - Short musical performed at Popcorn Saturday by Real Deal Theatre Company, directed by David Henson.

2013 – Downfall - Short play performed at the Tristan Bates Theatre for Equal Writes directed by Amanda Castro. Originally commissioned in 2011 by Tamasha Theatre Company for rehearsed public reading at Soho Theatre and also later read by Unicorn Theatre’s Young Company.

2012 - Border Lines - Full length play developed with Kali Theatre. Company for rehearsed public reading at Soho Theatre, directed by Elizabeth Freestone.

2011 – Blind Love - Short play shortlisted for The Windsor Fringe Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing.

2010 – For The Love of Her - Short play for Write Now Festival reading at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre.