EnActe Arts presents
Dog Mom
A barking mad comedy about love, loneliness and a very determined dog by Tate Elizabeth HanyokDirected by Ajay ChowdhuryOctober 15th, 2026 - November 7th, 2026
Southwark Playhouse (Borough)
One hour and fifty minutes (inc interval)
What if you could read your dog’s mind?What if your dog could talk?
Sarita has divorced and downsized from a large house to a tiny apartment in Brooklyn. A scruffy dog is the last thing she needs - she’s not a dog person and no way is she prepared to rearrange her life around a bitch with boundary issues.
But when she is forced to foster a stray, her guilt-induced charity becomes something messy and madcap. Dragged into the alien world of dog parks and intrusive dog-owners, Sarita discovers not only is this dog madly in love with her – but she’s prepared to let her know just how much, in ways she could never imagine.
Can Sarita open her heart to this dog’s devotion before the authorities arrive and turn her world upside down?
National New Play Network
NATIONAL NEW PLAY NETWORK (NNPN) is an alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays. Founded in 1998, NNPN continues to revolutionize the new play landscape through the strength of its member theaters, collaborative efforts, and its nationally recognized programs and services for artists and organizations.Over the past twenty years, NNPN has provided millions of dollars in funding to its Member Theaters, supported hundreds of productions nationwide through its innovative programming, helped launch and sustain the careers of thousands of artists, and reached hundreds of thousands of audience members around the world.
From the playwright
"Dog Mom" was born from a desire to create shared laughter and connection during a moment of profound social fragmentation. In increasingly fraught times, the play looks toward one of the few remaining points of near-universal affection—our relationships with our pets—as a way to restore community and mutual recognition. The bond between people and their pets offers a rare common language, and comedy became the vehicle through which that language could invite audiences into collective release, empathy, and belonging.
A secondary and equally vital inspiration was the lack of middle-life women in contemporary comedic storytelling. As a writer committed to female-driven comedy, I sought to center a woman in the midst of a midlife reckoning—an experience often rendered invisible, flattened, or treated with shame. The play also engages with the growing reality that many women do not become mothers, not as a failure or deviation, but as a lived truth deserving of dignity and narrative space. "Dog Mom" aims to meet that reality with humor rather than judgment, and with compassion rather than correction—asserting that womanhood, fulfillment, and worth are not singular paths, but many.
Cast & Creative
Vinita Belani
Sarita
Multi-lingual actor, director, producer, writer - Vinita Sud Belani is the Founding Artistic Director of EnActe Arts, a theatre company co-located in Houston, Silicon Valley and New York, that develops and presents thought-provoking, universally appealing stories that put South Asia in a global context and serves as a platform for talent development in playwriting and theatre making.Belani is an actor, director and producer. She returns to the world of acting after a five year hiatus. Some recent directing credits include A Nice Indian Boy, Go to your room, Mother!, Chaos Theory, The Conference of the Birds, Soundwaves: The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan, Queen, The Case of The Vanishing Firefish and The Jungle Book:Rudyard Revised, both of which she adapted. Vinita is trained in street theatre under the renowned director and playwright Badal Sircar.
Vinita brings to the world of artrepreneurship twenty years of CXO level experience in the corporate world of technology, both in large multinational corporations and in Silicon Valley startups.
Belani has lived and worked in nine countries across four continents, speaks seven languages fluently and has served on several non-profit boards dealing with educational access, domestic violence and sex trafficking.
Vinita holds a degree in Computer Science from BITS Pilani, India, an MBA from HEC France, a Diplôme in French from the Sorbonne and a Diplom in German from the Max Mueller Institute.
Patty Gallagher
Foster
Patty Gallagher is an actor/director with specialties in Shakespeare, Beckett, and Clown. She has performed, directed, and taught throughout the U.S., Asia, South America, and Europe. She is a Professor of Theatre Arts at UCSC. She received her Ph.D. from the UW-Madison and is a Fulbright Scholar. Collaborators include CalShakes, the Rogue, Folger, Corrib, The Jewel, New Canon, CenterRep, Marin Theatre, Grupo Malayerba and Teatro de los Cronopios (Ecuador), RangaShankara and Jagriti (India). She was Director-in-Residence at Clown Conservatory (CircusCenterSF). In fall she will return to India with a 4-actor version of Julius Caesar.
Tom Barnes
Ruben
Actor, improviser and performance poet, this is Tom Barnes’ sixth project with Ajay Chowdhury, having previously starred in Girls Just Want To Have Fun, A Simple Twist of Fate, Cymbeline, Smooch Music and The Private Ear. Last year he was in Propeller Productions’ Mrs T Foresees, and is a regular online cue-scripts-only performer with Shake-Scene Shakespeare, performing live this summer in Much Ado About Nothing and Mr Gardner in the Jane Austen House production of Pride and Prejudice. He performed Malvolio in Twelfth Night on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe in 2024.
As an improviser, he has created live plays with Fluxx, Three Worlds, Melting Pot, Black Sheep and other companies. As a comedian, he was half of the Two Gorgeous Hunks and was Julian Mackenzie in Sketch Club (which he also co-wrote). As a performance poet, he is a regular at Club Verbal Discharge and has performed across the UK, as well as shows in Prague and Vancouver, and has been published in The Spectator and various Insurgent Press anthologies. As a playwright, he co-wrote the live soap Same Time Next Week and Sherlock Holmes and the Queen Of Hearts, and wrote the children’s play Deadly Nightshade and the Magic Island. He is currently working on a musical based on Euripides’ The Bacchae, called And Then Fun Came Along.
Joanna Holden
Nell
Joanna has worked for: The London Performance Studio, Hull Truck, Bolton Octogon, SJT, Polka, Told by an Idiot, Clowns without Borders, Bamboozle Theatre, Creation Theatre, Lyceum Edinburgh, Bristol Old Vic, York Theatre Royal, The British Library, Manchester Royal Exchange, Live Theatre, Northern Stage, Svenska Theatre, Soho Theatre, Keswick Theatre, Bush Theatre, The Royal Court, Bolton Octagon, RNT, Sheffield Crucible, Perth Rep, The Gate, The Tricycle, The Gilded Balloon, Vamos, Kneehigh, Cirque Du Soleil, Cartoon de Salvo, RSC, The Ding Foundation
Tate Hanyok
Playwright
Tate Elizabeth Hanyok was named one of the Moviemaker Top 25 Writers to Watch and is known for her bold, female-driven comedies. Her genre-spanning portfolio includes the teen romantic comedy Sex APPeal, which she wrote and produced for Hulu, director of the female driven thriller Friends Until The End for A&E. Tate produced and adapted the play Love and Baseball, which she also starred in, for HBO MAX.
Tate’s storytelling journey began on stage, where her experience as a performer shaped a distinctly protagonist-centered approach. She appeared in stage productions including The Underpants, Boston Marriage, Red Herring, Bright Ideas, Ladies Foursome and on-camera work with credits including The Office (US), Superstore, Shameless (US), The Mentalist, NCIS, Community, and the film The Incredible Burt Wonderstone opposite Steve Carrell. Dog Mom marks her first produced play and she had the absolute time of her life playing the role of "Dog" in its U.S. premiere at The B Street Theatre.
Special thanks to the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere program for championing the production across the U.S. and to the talented artists of EnActe Arts for their warm embrace, inspiring collaboration, and expansion to London!
Ajay Chowdhury
Director
Ajay Chowdhury a crime novelist, tech entrepreneur and theatre director.Previous productions he has directed in London include The Merchant of Vembley, Cymbeline, When We Dead Awaken, The Lover, Smooch Music, Gallows Humour and The Private Ear. In India he directed Equus, ... and Indrajit, The Dock Brief and Cabin 12.He has made two short films and was the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker/Bloody Scotland crime writing award, subsequent to which he published seven crime novels in his Kamil Rahman series, the first of which – The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) has been optioned for television. He has also written a children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, that was adapted into a musical by EnActe Arts and premiered in San Francisco.Ajay studied theatre directing at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Sean Cavanagh
Designer
Trained at Central School of Art and Design under Ralph Koltai. A long-standing Associate Director of Riding Lights Theatre Company.
Over 500 productions designed ranging from major musicals to 2012 York Mystery Plays, Three Men in a Boat, John Godber’s Happy Jack and David Oyelowo’s The White Devil.
International: Dracula (Bangkok), world premiere of Judah Ben Hur- the Musical (Singapore), Pickwick (Hungarian National Theatre) Edward III (Taormina). Television: Who Do You Say I Am? (BBC). Multimedia Events:The Rock (San Francisco), Rock Me Amadeus (Vienna). Digital: Pericles, Breaking Day and Revolving Doors. Touring: M. Butterfly, Outside Edge, The Sound of Fury, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Winter’s Tale, African Snow, Salaam Bethlehem, Visiting Mr Green, The Opera Show, Igam Ogam, Dracula, Death Comes to Pemberley. West End: The Tempest, The Mikado, The Aspern Papers, Sherlock Holmes - the Musical, Of Mice and Men, When Did You Last See Your Trousers?, Never the Sinner, The Miracle Worker, In Praise of Love, The Roy Orbison Story, Stepping Out-the Musical, The Fire Raisers, Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Ratpack - Live from Las Vegas, Dancing in the Streets, African Snow, Visiting Mr Green, Cirque Berserk, Rubenstein Kiss, Conundrum.
Naveen Bhatia
Sound Design
Naveen Bhatia is a US based sound designer. While Naveen doesn't get much time to work on theater anymore, select favorite productions include Spring Awakening at the University of Southern California, Guards at the Taj at the Chester Theater, and The Baltimore Waltz at Princeton Summer Theater.
Oliver Brown
Lighting Design
Trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Oliver is currently Executive Director of Riding Lights Theatre Company and Vice-Chair of The Association of British Theatre Technicians.
Lighting design credits include Cyclops (Cast and National Theatre), How To Fly Like a Reindeer (Hull Truck Theatre), Night Falls and All’s Well That Ends Well (Riding Lights), Calderland (509Arts), Lark Rise To Candleford(New Perspectives Theatre Company), and The Laramie Project, Zoo Story, and Krapp’s Last Tape (Harrogate Theatre).
Other design credits include production design for Mistero Buffo (Riding Lights Theatre Company) and set design for Parragon Dreams, To Hull and High Water, and A Great Christmas Adventure (Hull Truck).
EnActe Arts
In 12 years, EnActe has grown to be America’s largest South Asian and it’s only national South Asian theater company, with over 40 productions, 80% of which are New Works. We are a proud member of CAATA (Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists), and an elected member of NNPN (National New Play Network). Over 400 artists call EnActe their home, including playwrights, directors, actors, designers, dancers, musicians, music composers, teaching artists, and arts administrators. We are an incubator and our talent has gone on to Broadway, Hollywood, and beyond. The EnActe School of Drama (ESOD) educates over 1000 students annually. Some of our ESOD studens are now employees of EnActe, running innovative creative programs for the next generation.
Press
For media enquiries, interviews and review tickets, please contact:
Charlotte Wakely, Gingerbread Agency: [email protected]
Thanks to Layla Chowdhury for her help and advice
© Ajay Chowdhury. All rights reserved.