In 1996 Graham Ley compiled for NTQ a record of the first twenty years of Tara Arts, the London-based British Asian theatre company. In this essay, he tests the theoretical concept of a third space for diaspora culture against the experience of two leading British Asian theatre companies, and considers the contrasting role of an Asian arts centre. From 2004 to 2009 Graham Ley led an AHRC-funded research project on ‘British Asian Theatre: Documentation and Critical History’, and has co-edited with Sarah Dadswell two books soon to be published by the University of Exeter Press: British South Asian Theatres: a Documented History and Critical Essays on British South Asian Theatre. He has earlier published in NTQ on Australian theatre and enlightenment and contemporary performance theory, and is presently Professor of Drama and Theory at the University of Exeter.