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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]