In 1978, she returned to the UK to train at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and worked as an actress.
In 1985, she co-founded the Inner Circle Theatre Company, producing and acting in a production of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening at the Young Vic studio.
[1] In 1989, on placement as a director-teacher at the National School of Drama, Delhi, she adapted and directed a student production of Mulk Raj Anand's novel Untouchable.
Women of the Dust won the Race in the Media Award for Best Radio Drama from the Commission for Racial Equality.
[3][4] Later that year, she directed Tuyen Do's Summer Rolls, a domestic drama about a family who have emigrated from war-torn Vietnam to Essex, at the Park Theatre, London.