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A Creative Director, playwright, theatre and multi-media practitioner, Smita translates her extensive experience as a social activist into performance art through theater, multimedia productions and films.She is a recognized trainer for Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplaces, and has delivered Judicial Education for Gender Equality within the Region. She has translated novels and has been published as a poet and playwright and also as a research fellow of WISCOM and K.K. Birla Foundation. She is a certified trainer for Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation from INTRAC Oxford UK, Conflict Management from Kurve Institute, Wustrow, Germany, Trainer of Trainers for Market Access for SMEs from Traidcraft, UK, and a Rotary World Peace Fellow.
She has worked extensively in prisons with under trials and convicts and outside the prisons with survivors of domestic violence and child sexual abuse, using storytelling and theater as the medium of interaction.
She is especially interested in the moment when a person transcends the state of inertia and choicelessness, and confronts the imperative to take responsibility and make choices. She indicates ways in which theatre can be a critical tool guiding people towards such a point. This has implications for critical pedagogy, experiential and transformative learning, as her work with, educators and students (schools and colleges) amply demonstrates, as well as for corporate theater which she escalates into building of emotional competencies.
She has performed in, directed and scripted over 20 plays over the past decade. She has worked on films (screenplay writing, editing, directing) made video installations, created performative interactive exhibitions, designed audio books. Founder Director of Bharti CreativeZ, she has also founded Hungry Heart Festival, a theatre society. She currently leads Sakshi, a creative education NGO focused on promoting the Practice of Everyday Equality and ending Gender Violence.
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