Former Shortland Street star Nisha Madhan has had to learn to love and leave.
Former Shortland Street star Nisha Madhan has had to learn to love and leave.
One divorce, two bottles of rosé, and countless artistic triumphs since the death of her groundbreaking Shortland Street character Nurse Shanti, actor Nisha Madhan tells Mitchell Hageman how she learned to let go and embrace expression, leading her to her latest Auckland festival project.
“I’ve been thinking a lot aboutwhat it means to love and leave someone, and what it means to love and to leave a place,” Nisha Madhan says.
We’re in the middle of talking about her latest project, the Festival of Live Art (FOLA), and stumble across the topic of creative constraint and expression.
Widely known for her groundbreaking role as Nurse Shanti Kumari on the popular TV soap Shortland Street from 2007-09, creative force Madhan has since become a champion for underground art. She helms festivals like FOLA – an explosive mish-mash of experimental live art that celebrates Auckland’s BIPOC and queer community – and has even taken on Edinburgh Fringe with her own shows.
Open, honest and candid, she admits that loving and leaving both Shorty St and her husband were factors that helped her unlock her full creative potential.
“I loved it for the first half of it, I just loved it so much, but I was getting to a point where it was just like not quite sitting right with me.
“Shanti, she was such a good girl, you know, she was so pure of heart and she could do no wrong. I was living on Karangahape Rd at the time and the more pure and good Shanti got, the more kind of underground and outrageously debauched I got in the background.”
Immersing herself in the world of burlesque and underground art parties, Madhan soon found creative inspiration in fringe performance art and was taken by its focus on inclusivity and freedom.
“But in many ways, I just struggled being a wife. I didn’t love it. I didn’t love the kind of social status of it and that people sort of get really obsessed with it.”
The wedding of Scotty (Kiel McNaughton) and Shanti (Nisha Madhan) on Shortland Street. Photo / Supplied
Therapy, she says, helped her realise that in order to move forward, she needed to make some hard decisions.
“It suddenly dawned on me that I could not do that in the marriage that I was in, and so I had to love and leave that person so that I could pursue what I really wanted.”
Exiting her marriage also helped her find her way to her close friend and fellow festival maker Julia Croft, describing their creative relationship as “much healthier” than that of a traditional marriage.
“I think if I was still married, I would not have my best friend, and so in a way, the reason that FOLA exists is because I chose my best friend over my ex,” she says.
Madhan recalls with a laugh the pair thinking about the festival while sitting in a hot tub on Waiheke Island, “about two bottles of rosé deep”.
“We were like, we should make a festival, but really, we made this festival because we wanted to make a festival for people, for artists like us,” she says. FOLA is back in full force for the first time since 2023, running from today until June 14.
“It’s all about people of colour, it’s about feminists, and it’s full of all of the tools you need to rail against the patriarchy. Also, we wanted to throw a really big party.”
While there are set to be plenty of surprises in store for FOLA – including a Tasmanian artist who will copper strip your old electronic device and turn it into an “ethical bullet” that will shoot back into the earth – there’s also a special Shorty Street connection as well.
Nisha Madhan has taken performances around the world, with her brainchild festival FOLA hitting Auckland this week. Photo / Andi Crown
Famed undercover policewoman on the show Nurse Tracey Morrison, played by Sarah Thomson, will be DJing at the opening night of the festival.
While the pair became close on set, an on-set urban legend remains about their on-screen relationship, something they went along with after the show ended.
“When Shanti died and was in her coffin, Nurse Tracey was in the scene and was crying really hard, but it was actually the actress Sarah being sad that the actress Nisha was leaving the show,” Madhan says.
“I can count on one hand the amount of scenes that Shanti and Nurse Tracey had together. They were not best friends, but then posthumously they must have assumed that we were close.”
What else did Madhan gain from the show, besides her lifelong friends?
“I arrived in New Zealand as a 12-year-old girl,” she says. “I watched Shortland Street while we were living in a motel, waiting to find a place to settle as an immigrant family, and never for one moment thought that I could be on it or that I could be on that screen and have an effect."
While representation on the show and creating fully-fleshed-out character opportunities for diverse actors is something Madhan admits is “complex” on a soap opera, she thinks the show’s heart has always been in the right place.
“There was never a question of it not being in the right place. It was just a question of how much time do you have to really create the complex authentic characters that exist in our world today. When you’re doing a soap opera, it’s not really your job to do that, but Shortland Street gives it a good whack, I reckon.”
In essence, all roads have led to FOLA for Madhan, and she encourages anyone and everyone to come and take part in the creative chaos.
While life may sometimes feel like an overblown episode of Shorty Street, Madhan says having places to celebrate and create is more vital than ever.
“I think it’s really important for cities, and it’s really important for young people.
“You need something to do and, especially at this time in the world, you need to be together. You need to find hope and joy in the most unexpected places, and I think FOLA is one of those places.”
FOLA takes place on June 11-14 at the Basement Theatre, Myers Park, and other locations around the city, with a mix of free and ticketed events on offer.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.
