Three decades of writing, making and sharing stories
WRITING
Published Articles
A Black Cock Story
Dar es salaam. 1967.
‘You have to find a cock, a big, black cock. It has to be black. A very big, black cock. Unaelewa?[understand?]’ Mai looked fierce as she wagged her finger vigorously in Annie’s face.
‘Naelewa[I understand]’ Annie said, trying, not successfully, to hide a smirk as she wrapped her kitenge around her house-dress. She knew this little drama was being played out for Jonathan’s benefit. After fifteen years as Mrs. Alfonse’s maid, she was well used to her calculating theatricality. Jonathan pictured a big, black cock. Its one-eyed glare seemed angry. It wouldn’t like him. He could tell.
Ms. Marvel
Meet Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, the sixteen-year-old Pakistani American school girl/newest Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Superhero to fly across the TV or streaming device in your hand. In Pakistan, where the series is partly set, it has been accorded feature film status and screened in cinemas to a large rapturous response.
In a comment that was echoed through the social media and online universe , @fatimafarha noted on Twitter (June 9), “The first Muslim superhero being introduced in the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe] & she’s a young Pakistani girl at that. This is special. Especially for the brown girls who grew up feeling like they would have to abandon their culture to be accepted & loved. This is for us.”
Freddie and Me
We had a shared history, Freddie Mercury and I, though we were born a generation apart. We were both born in Tanzania, I in Arusha in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro, he on Zanzibar the clove-scented island that lies just sixty-eight km off the mainland coast. Both of us born into Indian migrant families but from outlier Indian communities. He was born Farrokh Bulsarara into the minority Parsi community, descendants of Iranian immigrants to India, followers of the Zoroastrian religion. I was born Steve Raymund Edward Pereira into the Goan community; Portuguese colonial subjects othered in our Europeanised, Catholic ways. We were Indian but also, always something else as well.
For more articles and published work, visit my page on Medium.
MAKING
Film
Here's the Real Joke, Mate, 2021
A series of TikTok ten short anti-racism films for 12 to 15 years. Taking aim at the familiar excuse “It’s Just a joke, mate! The series is a crash course in how racism was weaponised and provides practical, non-
confrontational strategies to challenge contemporary racism.
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Writer / Director / Producer
Theatre
Directed over 30 independent productions including several for the Actors Equity Toronto, Fringe Festival Toronto and the the Fringe Festival Melbourne.
The Graceful Giraffe Cannot Become a Monkey, 2017
Produced first as a dramatised reading for the Big West Festival in 2014 and then in 2017 as a performance for the VCA Masters in Directing thesis production, the play is an adaptation of Okot p’Bitek’s acclaimed poems Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol.
Writer / Director / Producer
Fear and Loathing In the Howard Reich, 2006
A Darebin Theatre Project production, the play was an adaptation of Bertholt Brecht’s Fear and Loathing in the Third Reich, locating the play in Australia with a focus on John Howard’s stance on migrants, refugees and involvement in the Iraq war.
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Producer / Adaptation / Director.
It’s a Goan Thing,
1994
Produced to celebrate the 25th
Anniversary of the Toronto Goan Overseas Association, this workshop production explored and celebrated the particular quixotic issues of diasporic Goan identity.
Producer / Director.
My Kind Of Night,
1994
Produced for the Toronto Fringe
Festival, the play is a sensual, erotic and provocative dreamscape journeying through the minefields of race, culture and sexuality in search of his identity.
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Writer/ Producer / Director.
SHARING
Cinespace
About Us, For You Program 2025
Writers' Room Training Program, 2025
Anthology of Urban Myths, 2020
Social Change on Screen. A Screenwriter's Fellowship, 2019
The program was a five week professional development initiative designed to equip emerging and early-career screenwriters with practical, industry-ready skills through a collaborative writer’s room model led by acclaimed screenwriter and actor Osamah Sami (Ali’s Wedding, House of Gods)
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Producer
A six month fellowship program for nine emerging writers to develop critical and creative capacity on incorporating social justice themes in screenplays
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Project Coordinator
Commissioned for ABC TV but not produced, the series The Hitchhiker, The Sorceress and a Homicidal White Rabbit Among Other Things is an anthology by six Melbourne writers of urban myths from a range of cultures.
Producer
Festivals
Sunshine Short Film Festival, 2010-2012
Festival of Collaboration and Improvisation, 2019
A place-making project created in collaboration with Bruce White and the Sunshine Business Association, this hugely successful festival won the 2014 Mainstreet Australia Award for community engagement and the 2019 Brimbank Council Culture, Arts, Tourism Award. ​
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Founder and Director
A Festival of Collaboration and Improvisation. Featuring Aria Award guitarist Jeff Lang and renowned tabla player Bobby Singh, the workshop and festival brought together a group of musicians from diverse cultures and musical traditions.
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Director
Other Projects
Bent TV, 2009-2016
Desh Pardesh, 1988-1995
Bent TV is a long-running LGBTIQA+ program airing on Melbourne’s Channel 31 (C31).
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Board Member, Programmer and Host
Desh Pardesh 1988 -2001 was an annual international arts festival in Toronto, Canada that focused on queer and South Asian culture.
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Founding Director and Administrator