Sri Lankan-origin actress Bhavithra Gananathan will make her professional acting debut as Sita in the arena musical Diwali Story: The Journey of Ram at OVO Arena Wembley on Sunday, 27 September, the Daily Mirror reported.
The 19-year-old appears opposite Kiran Kaanan as Ram. The professional cast is joined by roughly 100 community actors and dancers. Doors open at 4.30 pm, with the performance starting at 6.15 pm.
The performer
Gananathan is an actress, writer and classically trained Bharatanatyam dancer. She began acting at five, playing Ursula in a production of The Little Mermaid, and has trained and performed over the 14 years since with organisations including the National Youth Theatre and the Rose Theatre. She now trains at the Collective Acting Studio and won the National Iris Breuer Writing Award in 2024.
She started Bharatanatyam at seven under her aunt, Meena Elankumaran, completing her arangetram in March 2025, and has trained in Carnatic vocal music since she was 12.
On the role, she said: “As a young woman, it is especially meaningful to portray Sita. An important part of her journey unfolds in Sri Lanka, and the island’s landscape, history and traditions retain a powerful connection with the Ramayana. Playing Sita allows me to explore that connection while helping to bring this timeless story to a new generation.”
That is the Sri Lankan angle the Daily Mirror is reporting on — not the performer’s biography alone, but that the Ramayana’s Lanka is a real place with a live claim on the story.
The production
The musical opens in the home of a contemporary British family, where a teenager named Luv is introduced by his grandparents to the meaning of the story of Ram and Sita. It works through exile, sacrifice, duty and difficult choices, and is performed in English.
It follows the show’s sold-out 2025 staging at the Royal Albert Hall, returning with new material. The score includes original songs by Indian composer Rahul Ranade, with playback singer and Padma Shri recipient Kavita Krishnamurthy contributing to the new music. A newly written third act covers the five days of Diwali and the Ramayana’s continuing influence on family tradition.
The production is directed and co-written by Sâmir Bhamra and presented by Sanatan Events Ltd with The Palan Foundation and Golden Tours.
On timing and sourcing
The Daily Mirror’s report appends two raw links: a BroadwayWorld cast announcement dated 12 August and an Instagram post. The casting was therefore public roughly six weeks before this filing; the peg is the performance itself, now five days away.
Gananathan gave an interview to Tamil Guardian ahead of the show, in which she discusses her training and the role at length. That piece carries no machine-readable publication date, so it is linked here as context rather than cited as a dated source. One detail differs between the two accounts: the Daily Mirror names the National Youth Theatre among her training grounds, while in the interview she says the National Theatre Company.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not say where in Sri Lanka her family is from, or whether she has performed on the island. There is no ticket price or capacity figure, no indication whether the show will tour or return, and no comment from the production about why the Sri Lankan connection was foregrounded in casting.
