“It ripped me to shreds; it was the catharsis I needed.”
Proudly Asian Theatre has been across the motu with Fresh off the Page, our long running, iconic Asian playreading series. Since falling in love with Ōtepoti on the Robert Lord residency in 2025, Creative director Chye-Ling Huang floated the idea of our first Dunedin playreading - and on Saturday 14th November 2026, our first reading will land at Te Whare o Rukutia in Dunedin Central!
So who is our inaugural Ōtepoti writer?
Meet Indie Raman; an actress and writer who also works in costume design, currently based in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Indie is a Tamilian of both Indian and Sri Lankan origins. She loves treading the nexus of deep cultural nuance and pragmatic modernism. Always a ‘theatre kid’ and dancer at heart, she engages performance and arts to highlight social issues and find communal solutions to them.
PAT’s FOTP is her first foray into the world of writing for theatre and film. For Fresh off the Page, she’s working on The Mothers.
Spanning three generations of women connected by blood, identity and survival, ‘The Mothers’ follows the story of mother-daughter duo Ashira and Kefira, Tamil women whose lives and culture are shadowed by the intergenerational trauma of the three-decade-long Sri Lankan civil war.
We asked Indie about her process, inspiration and learnings, and what is driving her to create this epic, confronting work.
Where do you draw inspiration for your project?
Being a Eelam Tamilian (Eelam being the Tamil name for Sri Lanka) the inspiration for The Mothers comes from the stories and lived experiences of the civil war I grew up with. I had the blessing and curse of growing in and around Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu in South India, where the stories and experiences of many of us shaped the person I am now. You can't out live the horrors of a civil war; the aftermath carries on generation after generation. This project particularly looks at coping mechanisms and coming to terms with the duality of migration and war survival.
Maria Jeyaseelan and family, a Sri Lankan woman fighting to get her remaining land still held by the Navy confiscated during the civil war [Rina Chandran/Thomson Reuters Foundation for Aljazeera]
Were there particular experiences, ideas, or tensions that inspired this piece?
The main tension that was inspirational was the contrast of cultures and practices between my Indian and SriLankan sides of the family. We are all Tamil by ethnic identity, but the contrasts in dialects, cultural nuances and who wore the pants in the family was breathtaking! By the time we settled in Chennai in the 90's India has had freedom, democracy and stability in economies and cultural revival. The Indian side and general life was peaceful, prosperous and vivid with colours and sounds of joy!
Chennai in the 90s, photos by J. Carelyn Hannah
But being Eelam Tamil as well meant, there was always an undercurrent of tension and survivors' guilt that ran on my Sri Lankan side. The cries over loss of land, sovereignty, identity and the subtle shift from matrilineal authority to making do with wherever and whatever we landed drove us insane. We are still in mourning as a race of people and our women and children took the brunt of the decay that comes with civil war. The elders suddenly changing tone mid celebration and sharing war stories was common and normalised.
What are you hoping to get out of your development reading?
I am hoping for feedback from both the audience and the team. I would very much love this project to hit theatres and film as a developed script and I am open to receiving the testing process of a public reading. This is my first ever script out in the open! Be nice :P
What made this a story you wanted to tell, and what keeps you coming back to this story, on a personal level?
It is in some ways my own story and the story of my racial identity. Tamil representation in the arts and literature, outside our own self sustaining consumption, is not common or widespread. It is time the world saw our viewpoint, heard our stories and understood what shapes this very ancient yet very modernised race of people who identify themselves by the language they speak; above all.
What’s one thing you’d like to share about your writing process?
It ripped me to shreds; it was the catharsis I needed; it was the story that has lived in me rent free for years and needed to get out and get on paper. It was the beginning of things; it was the end of things. It is my offering to God, for seeing us through the pain and tears and landing us into the safety of Aotearoa.
What’s one question you have about your own script or story at this point? Or a problem you’re trying to solve?
Is she (the script) what I think she is; a story of resilience, survival and coming of age and yet at its core she is the narrative of a family of matriarchs and their lively shenanigans?
Catch The Mothers at our LIVE reading and get a chance to support this work in its first public outing!
Sat, 14 Nov, 6:30pm
Te Whare o Rukutia, Dunedin
$10 tickets here
Brought to you by Proudly Asian Theatre with support from Creative New Zealand and Dunedin City Council. Produced with Programme Manager Jess Karamjeet.