As a teenager – when she wasn’t making plays – Milli Bhatia often went out raving. And the time on the dancefloor still influences how one of London’s most exciting directing talents makes work for the stage. “You go to the theatre to be thrilled and shaken,” she says. “I want to feel exhilarated and wakened, like I do when I go raving.” Though she adds with a smile that when going out to clubs these days, “raving doesn’t feel like the right word anymore”.
Later this year, Bhatia will take her breakout production of Jasmine Lee Jones’s hit play seven methods of killing kylie jenner (the title is styled in lower case) to Sweden and then in 2023 on a tour of the US, but first she’s taking the helm on Sonali Bhattacharyya’s new play Chasing Hares, opening at the Young Vic next week. True to form, in an attempt to bring that visceral experience, she told her technical team, “Let’s give the audience a nosebleed.”
