Careers@Drama School Mumbai
Building the New Generation of Theatre-makers… Requires an Executive Assistant, a Senior Accountant, Research Intern (Fundraising) and Course Advisor unlike any other. The past year has given us a chance to renew our commitment to the acting and theatre-making community by finding new, more resilient ways to train using digital mediums. The range and […]
The transformative power of theatre in the lives of neurodiverse individuals
Writing about a topic you don’t personally identify with can be a challenge, especially when it’s as sensitive and prevalent as identifying on the neurodiverse spectrum. Personally, I’ve been fortunate to grow up around close family members who identify on the spectrum. Additionally, I crossed paths with Kelly Hunter at an early stage in my […]
Fostering a community: A peek into the ‘Mela’ as DSM turns 10
With students and facilitators spanning over a decade, coming ‘back to school’ took on a new meaning last month. The Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh was buzzed with excitement as people – alumni, long-time collaborators, well-wishers of the school gathered to celebrate the school’s 10-year anniversary. It wasn’t just about commemorating DSM’s existence, but more about […]
Towards Aadyant 2023: From ‘Aadi’ to ‘Ant’ — the journey of DSM students’ final showcase
Walking into the rehearsal room at Drama School Mumbai on a Tuesday evening, I could immediately feel the energy shift. There was a palpable sense of hope and inspiration in the air, along with a lively, exuberant vibe. As an alum, it was nostalgic to see the students of the current in-person batch at their […]
A Classical Monopoly: A deep dive into how classics have shaped contemporary drama
The overcast skies of Mumbai, amidst the gentle rustling of leaves, is an ideal setting for some inspirational writing. What better than gloom to get you reminiscing over the stories of Tagore such as The Postmaster or Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ that I watched one Sunday afternoon, with my Bengali mother translating all the difficult […]
Unrehearsed Futures (S4) #3 Lean into the Well: Exploring the Relationship between Art and Health
Can art really heal us? Last autumn, UK-based Limbik Theatre headed into the woods in Norwich, England with a multi-generational cast of local community performers, most of whom ran around wearing masks and hessian sacks. The company was trying to stage an outdoor show, but in the process learned something fascinating: Working on the show […]
Being is the Queerest Thing
This is an unstructured response to the idea of imagining queer futures. It is a collection of musings about the past, present and future, attempting to queer the concept of time itself. With excerpts from Hina’s collection of queerfuturistic tales, personal histories, lists, memories, questions, observations and a fair bit of rambling, the author attempts […]
Unrehearsed Futures (S4) #2 Two Years On: Have White Colleagues Listened?
After an intellectually stimulating season opener on creativity, AI and fungi, we revisited an older conversation from Season 1 which was based on the open letter “White Colleague, Listen!”, where co-curator Amy Russell had invited one of the signatories, Mojisola Adebayo to speak further with our audience on the responsibility and “response-ability” desired from the […]
Photo essay: Drama School Mumbai students spend a transformative week at Ninasam
Any work of art should make us feel, think or imagine and this goes for theatre as well. When the 29 students of Drama School Mumbai’s in-person batch of 2022-23 landed at Nilakanteshwara Natyaseva Sangha (popularly known as Ninasam) Theatre Institute in Heggodu, Karnataka on a hot, sweltering April afternoon, they truly could not have […]
Unrehearsed Futures (S4) #1 Networks that were, are, and will be
A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds & Shape […]
Between ‘Love and Information’ & ‘The Lower Depths’: A peek into the rehearsal process
It’s a hot, muggy day in the packed lanes of Girgaon, but up on the 5th floor of the Drama School Mumbai, there’s absolute silence as a duo of actors thinks over what their director has just said. One raises a quizzical eyebrow but then interrupts her own thought and says, “Never mind, I need […]
Creating your own play: Recipients of DSM Alumni Grant share learnings, challenges of putting out their work
When starting out as an actor or theatre-maker, the idea of creating one’s own work can be quite intimidating. Many artists prefer to search for opportunities in productions being made by ‘established theatrewallahs’. However, during our time at Drama School Mumbai, our teachers really pushed us to create our own work. While some of us […]
Borrowing from the Theatre Classroom: Thriving in an Arts Organization
“I don’t really know what I’m doing..” James quipped and I enthusiastically echoed the statement, both of us bursting into laughter. A few weeks after I moved to Boston to begin teaching at Emerson College, I received a phone call from my teacher-friend from grad school James Peck. Even though there was plenty to catch […]
The Serious Art of Puppetry: In Conversation with Anurupa Roy
Editor’s Note: India has a rich history in theatre, but our knowledge about the work our contemporaries and older groups have and are doing, is often limited to the geographies we live in. Driven by a curiosity to know about the work being created across the country, over the next couple of months, we will […]
Discovering Mythologies and Traditional Forms through Nimmy Raphel and V Balakrishnan
I waited anxiously, having just refreshed my distant memories of watching Mahabharata on TV on Sunday mornings as a child and being forced to listen to stories of myth and folklore by my grandmother. I rapidly read through an online abridged Britannica essay on the epics in a last-minute attempt to prevent myself from saying […]
23 in 2023: A peek into what keeps the DSM alums ticking this New Year
While we are all trying to make sense of the past few years, yet another year is upon us! One-half of the internet is busy sharing memes about still processing 2020 while the other half has started with their year-end posts, holiday plans and all that’s to come next. With murmurs of another deadly variant […]