ABOUT ME

Hana Nadira is an actor, director and composer born in Kuala Lumpur. Over a career of fifteen years, she has performed across Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, South Korea and Scotland. Her last performance on the international stage was in Fred Deakin’s Club Life at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which won The Scotsman Fringe First Award 2023.

On screen, you may catch her on Astro On Demand, playing leading roles in Murder By Moonlight and Take CTRL. In 2020, a devised show she performed in with KL Shakespeare Players and Nyoba Kan, A Tale of Star-Crossed Lovers, won the Special Mention International Jury Award in Milan, Italy, at the International Prize of Teatro Nudo of Teresa Pomodoro. Hana also won Best Actor at the Short & Sweet Theatre Festival 2016. Other credits include leading roles in You, Me & The Big C, Tragedi Hamlet, Uda & Dara, Cock (The Actor's Studio), Swordfish+Concubine and Shakespeare Demystified: Romeo & Juliet (KL Shakespeare Players).
 
A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Hana has won Best Composer and Best Music Director at the Short & Sweet Musical Festival 2015. In 2018, she received Cendana's Emerging Artist Incubation Award for Belantara, a feminist musical retelling of Malaysian folklore stories that she wrote, composed and music directed. Hana has also directed and created work across different mediums, including Lari 1000 Malam (theatre), Pause//Play (online performance), Spooky Stories for Children Who Can't Sleep At Night (fiction/audio), and Big Girl/Little Girl (audio).

In 2020, Hana co-founded Panas Panas Theatre, where she leads the #WomensPlayMarathon initiative - fortnightly online readings of plays written by women and marginalised genders. She was also Festival Director and co-curator of Women's Theatre Festival Kuala Lumpur in 2021, which staged four online readings of plays written by local women playwrights. In her work, Hana is passionate about telling honest and nuanced stories, and hopes to amplify women’s narratives in society.

CV (Dec 2023)