Lolita Chakrabarti OBE
Lolita Chakrabarti OBE is an award-winning playwright and actress. Writing credits include Life of Pi, Red Velvet, Hymn and Hamnet and acting credits include Hamlet, Vigil, Riviera, Showtrial and Amazon series Wheel of Time. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has carved out an innovative, diverse and long running career.
Lolita adapted the classic novel Life of Pi, based on the award winning novel by Yann Martell, which opened in London’s West End in December 2021, after premiering to 5-star reviews at the Sheffield Crucible in July 2019. It was nominated for nine Olivier Awards and won five, including Best Play, it also won four awards at the UK Theatre Awards, including Best Play and Best Director. The play opened on Broadway in March 2023, was nominated for five Tony Awards, winning three and is now opening and touring in venues across the world including in Dubai, Mumbai , China and a tour of North America.
Lolita adapted Maggie O'Farrell's best selling novel Hamnet for the stage. Hamnet had its world premiere at Stratford-Upon-Avon's Swan Theatre in April 2023. After its sold-out run at Stratford, the show transferred to the West End's Garrick Theatre for a highly anticipated five
month run.
Hymn, a play by Lolita about male love, that is neither physical nor romantic, streamed live from The Almeida and was broadcast on Sky Arts, during the coronavirus pandemic, to huge critical acclaim. It opened to audiences at The Almeida in July 2021 and will open at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in 2025.
In 2019, Invisible Cities premiered at the Manchester International Festival, which Lolita adapted from the classic novel by Italo Calvino of the same name. It was an ambitious and stunning production and a collaboration between Rambert dance company, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, 59 Productions and Lolita. Invisible Cities also opened at the Brisbane Festival in September 2019.
In 2012 Lolita's debut play, Red Velvet, premiered at the Tricycle Theatre in London. It returned to the Tricycle in 2014, before transferring to St Ann’s Warehouse in New York and onto the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End, as part of Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Plays at the Garrick season. Red Velvet was nominated for nine major awards including two Oliviers. Lolita won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, The Critics Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright and the AWA Award for Arts and Culture. There have been over 40 productions of Red Velvet worldwide to date including at the Chicago Shakespeare Company.
Lolita curated The Greatest Wealth at the Old Vic in London in 2018, commissioning seven monologues of which she wrote one, about the NHS on its 70th birthday. It was a fitting tribute to an incredible history and starred Jade Anouka, Louise English, Dervla Kirwan, Ruth Madeley, Art Malik, Meera Syal, Sophie Stone and David Threlfall. The series was updated in July 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, with a monologue written by Bernardine Evaristo and performed by Sharon D Clarke.
Lolita also worked as dramaturg for Kate Prince on Message in a Bottle, which opened at the Peacock Theatre in 2020 and Sylvia starring Beverley Knight, which opened at The Old Vic in 2023.
Lolita has also written for radio. Credits include: Calmer, an original play about motherhood and chaos (BBC Radio 3), Red Velvet (BBC Radio 4), The Goddess, a 5-part Woman's Hour serial (BBC Radio 4).
Having trained at RADA as an actress, Lolita has enjoyed a long and varied career on stage and screen. She recently played Hilde in The Hunt for The Almeida at St Ann's Warehouse in New York, and Miss Cooper and Millie Crocker-Harris in Summer 1954 with Sian Phillips and Nathaniel Parker. In 2017 she played Queen Gertrude to Tom Hiddleston's Hamlet, directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh for RADA, and starred in Fanny & Alexandra at the Old Vic in 2018 as well as appearing in major BBC dramas including Vigil and Showtrial for BBC1.
Other credits include Last Seen – Joy (Almeida Theatre) which she also wrote, The Great Game, Afghanistan (Tricycle Theatre), the lead role in Free Outgoing (Royal Court and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh), John Gabriel Borkman (Donmar Warehouse), Twelfth Night (Salisbury Playhouse/Edinburgh Lyceum), Grimm’s Tales (Young Vic), King Lear (Tarawa), Robert LePage’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (National Theatre), Wheel of Time (Amazon), J K Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy (BBC1/HBO), Criminal (Netflix), Riviera (Sky Atlantic), Defending The Guilty (BBC), To Provide All People (BBC2), Extras (BBC1), Outnumbered (BBC1), Bodies (CH4), Delicious (Sky One), Born to Kill (CH4), Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (ITV), Vera (ITV), Jekyll and Hyde (ITV), My Mad Fat Diary 3 (E4), Death in Paradise (BBC1), One Night (BBC1), Smoke (Sky1), Outnumbered (BBC1), 95 episodes as WPC Jamilla Blake in The Bill (ITV) and Fortysomething (BBC).
Lolita produced Of Mary, which won Best Short Film at PAFF, Los Angeles.
Lolita is on the board of RADA and Rambert Dance.
Lolita was awarded with an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in June 2021 for Services to Drama.
