It has been one and a half years since the pandemic changed our lives in unimaginable ways. It has changed the way we think about theatre and performance and the digital space. Unrehearsed Futures began with a view to understand how to disseminate theatre pedagogy through the online medium and has now grown into investigating […]

At our recent conversation for Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2), we were joined by Neil Coppen, a South African theatre-maker and co-founder and co-director of Empatheatre in Durban, and explored collaborative methods of theatre-making to identify matters of concern and a pressing central question.  Since 2014, Coppen shared that the Empatheatre team has tackled social concerns […]

Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we look at the world around us. It has highlighted existing ruptures, be it climate change, caste-based violence or racism, economic instability etc. In all this, what role does embodied creative practice perform in moments of resistance and rupture? How does the work of […]

For a while now, we’ve been exploring how the pandemic has affected theatre pedagogy and learning. But what does it entail for writers? What kind of theatre writing is expected of writers in and beyond this pandemic moment? What social responsibility do they bear? Discussing this and more, playwrights Abhishek Majumdar and Kamili Feelings shared […]

One of the pre-requisites to becoming an actor is being able to embody neutrality. Most drama training programmes around the world circle back to the idea of being neutral – neutral bodies, neutral faces, neutral voices. There is an emphasis on being present in the body, releasing tension within in. A list of do’s and […]

A year later, our world is still in the midst of a global pandemic while being compelled to engage with social justice movements across the globe. Since lockdowns were announced around the world in March 2020, theatre practitioners were forced to stay inside and figure out how to create art from domestic spaces. What felt […]

In the fourteenth session of Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2), South African poet, performer and author Lebo Mashile shared her experience of the pandemic during the past year, things that changed around her, and spaces where there is possibility to make new changes. Mashile also shared how the pandemic has economically affected black creative communities in […]

Among the many things the past year has made us reflect upon, owing to COVID-19 induced social isolation, one of them is questioning and answering for ourselves: Who is our community? Who are the people we want and need around us? If we take this a step further, what are the many levels of community […]

In the twelfth session of Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2), members of SITI Company, New York, Ellen Lauren (co-artistic director) and J.Ed Araiza (principal actor) shared what the past year has been like for them, the opportunities and possibilities it opened up in theatre and pedagogy and what they reckon they need to do as they […]

Theatre, performance and social justice are natural bedfellows. But often theatre and performance are seen as a mere source of entertainment. The theatres of social justice aim at engaging communities and actually changing societies.  For our twelfth session of Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2), we had Sara Matchett, artistic director and co-founder of The Mothertongue Project […]

We’ve been living through a pandemic for more than a year now. Lockdowns, work-from-home, vaccinations – these are terms that have become commonplace and accepted as the new normal. When we began Unrehearsed Futures last year, we reached out to a global community of theatre pedagogues, students and practitioners to understand the terrifying moment we […]

The ninth session of Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2) witnessed a rich conversation about the women who contributed significantly to European legacies of “masters” Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau etc. During the session, Cass Fleming, founder of The Chekhov Collective, and Paola Coletto, the pedagogical director of Padova Arts Academy discussed that though the nomenclature of physical […]

In the eighth session of Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2), renowned Indian director and founder of Theatre Roots and Wings, Sankar Venkateswaran called for a world that moved slower, closer and is more tolerant in a post-pandemic scenario. Quoting a Japanese economist, he added that this can be achieved through theatre and performance.  To explain this […]

When the Black Lives Matter protests took place across the world year, their impact could be felt in academic institutions around the world, who took up the task to decolonize their pedagogy further. But what does this decolonization of a pedagogy entail for theatre academicians? One of the things it includes is re-evaluating which texts […]

Being locked up in one’s homes for the past year, the pandemic has triggered an identity and perpetual existential crisis (apart from the devastating health and economic crises) for everybody, in some shape or form. Last year, theatre pedagogues and practitioners were faced with working with a new medium – what did that mean for […]