Kabir is from India and finds sanctuary as a gardener for his local London church. Michael used to be a pastor in Rwanda before he fled persecution. Sebastian used to be a hotshot photographer but was destroyed by drink. Jenny, the vicar, lives with her grandmother, a frank ex-colonial widow. Ayesha, 15, also comes to the gardens for solace since the death of her father.

When a photograph of an African church appears in this little Eden, a complex drama of morality and conscience in a multicultural Britain unfolds.

About Tanika Gupta

As a child Tanika performed Tagore dance dramas with her parents group "The Tagoreans" across the European continent. After graduating from Oxford University Tanika worked as a community worker and in an Asian women's refuge for several years. Tanika began writing drama in the early 1990's and for some time was also a script reader for BBC TV'S 'Black screen'. She gave this up in '96 to concentrate solely on her writing.

Appointed Writer in residence at the Soho Theatre Company (1996-98) Tanika was the Pearson's writer in residence at The Royal National Theatre in 2000. Tanika Gupta is the author of The Waiting Room (for which she won the John Whiting Award 2000), staged at the Cottesloe as part of the NT Studio Springboards programme in 2000. Other stage plays include:

• Voices On The Wind (NT Studio),
• Skeleton (Soho Theatre Company)
• A River Sutra, an adaptation of Gita Mehta's novel (for Indosa /NT Studio, Three Mill Island Studios)
• On The Couch With Enoch (for The Red Room), and her translation of Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan (NT Education).

SANCTUARY is designed by Jon Bausor and is the sixth play in the LOFT space in the innovative TRANSFORMATION season, which offers cheaper ticket prices and aims to develop new generations of theatre makers and attract new generations of theatre audiences.

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