Lighten Up

'Bollywood comes to Griffin-sort of.' In Australia, we like 'em blonde and bronzed. In India, it's 'fair and lovely'. So what happens if you're stuck in between? John Green is an Anglo-Indian Australian actor who dreams of being cast in his favourite TV soap, Bondi Parade. The problem is, his coloured contacts can't hide the fact that his skin is more brown than white. Meanwhile, his skin-bleached mum is determined for him to procreate with a blonde, white Aussie woman in order to rid the family of any sign of their ethnic heritage. All hell breaks loose when John falls in love with an Indigenous woman called Sandy. This very funny play by actor (and Bollywood leading-man) Nicholas Brown and comedian Sam McCool tells a universal tale of identity, cultural assimilation and bleaching your bits.

NICHOLAS BROWN is actor, playwright, screenwriter, singer and songwriter. A NIDA graduate, he has had lead roles in the Indian/Bollywood films Sedition, Pratichhaya, Love You To Death and Kites. In Australia, Brown has appeared in the films unINDIAN, Random 8, A Man's Gotta Do, Temptation and The Characters. TV roles include The Code 2, Packed To The Rafters, Mr and Mrs Murder, The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fighting, Underbelly Files: The Man Who Got Away, Lucky Dragon, City Homicide, Home and Away, The Cooks, White Collar Blue and Heartbreak High. Theatre credits include Lumiere in Disney India's Beauty and the Beast, Jesus in Alyque Padamsee's Jesus Christ Superstar in Mumbai, Dead Man Brake, The Laramie Project, A Counting And Cracking Of Heads, Rehaan Engineer's Seven Jewish Children, Rehaan Engineer's Doctrine: How to Survive Under Siege, Miss Bollywood â " The Shilpa Shetty Musical, The Oresteia, Romeo and Juliet, Fewer Emergencies, Spew and Frozen. His screenwriting credits include Tantra 2 and the fantasy film The Brownies. Brown is a proud member of Actors' Equity and the Equity Diversity Committee.