Unrehearsed Futures (S3) #4 Storming the Commons
To what extent can performance help us to generate meaningful encounters? Not only despite, but generated by the incapacitation that our chaotic world seems to produce? Probing these curiosities, we were joined by a pair of exciting activist-practitioners at a recent Unrehearsed Futures conversation – US-based Kat Purcell and South Africa-based Qondiswa James – who […]
Unrehearsed Futures (S3) #3 Pedagogy Under Fire: Transmitting & Recreating Theatre Making In The Context of War
We live in a constant state of flux, of madness, and instability; in a chaosmos. While the pandemic brought disruption to the fore, this state of instability, of being off-balanced has always been a part of our lives. As we delve deeper into living and creating in such a state in this season, we decided […]
Take A Child To The Theatre Day: Can Theatre Rebuild a Generation of Lost Childhood?
All around the world, we are now collectively stumbling to figure out what life means after two years of being in a pandemic. While everyone has suffered loss and been hurt by COVID-19, young people, in particular, have been robbed of the childhood they were supposed to have. With World Day of Theatre for Children […]
Curated Conversations: Jyoti Dogra on her digital performance ‘Nihayati Neeji Baatein’
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.― Pablo Picasso The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle These two quotes perfectly defined the third edition of Curated Conversations with the eminent theatre-maker and actor Jyoti Dogra. She believes that non-narrative and non-textual […]
Unrehearsed Futures (Season 3) #2 From Our Correspondents: A Conversation Between Ukrainian and Russian Theatre Artists
We had a very unique session at our second Unrehearsed Futures conversation of Season 3, where we invited Ukrainian and Russian theatre artists to share their thoughts about the ongoing war in Ukraine, which Russia invaded on 24 February, 2022. A gut wrenching conversation, several artists from both countries shared their lived experiences, their fears, […]
International Women’s Day 2022: Inside My Dream Rehearsal Room
I have always been curious about the ways in which rehearsal rooms are created – by the individuals who make up the room, and the dynamics and interactions that exist in every group that we, in the theatre community, have learnt to negotiate. Ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, I had the privilege […]
Being a Feminist Theatre-Maker: A Conversation with Sharanya Ramprakash
How does someone become a feminist theatre-maker? For Sharanya Ramprakash, simply being a woman who makes theatre is enough to make the work feminist. When I told her that this article would be to spotlight her work on International Women’s Day, she was overjoyed. She believes that women need to wholly claim March 8th each […]
WATCH: In Conversation with the Women of Aagaaz Theatre Trust
The Aagaaz Theatre Trust are a truly unique bunch of theatre practitioners who have redefined community engagement in recent years. This month, we interviewed the women at Aagaaz – co-founder Sanyukta, actor/core team member Nagina and facilitator/core team member Subhadra about the various programs they run with members of the Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti (in […]
Unrehearsed Futures (Season 3) #1 Creating in the Chaosmos: Indeterminacy and Generative Incapacitation
For our first conversation for Season 3, we invited Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé, a Nigerian poet, writer and public intellectual to share his thoughts on our theme for this year – Off-Axis: Creating In The Chaosmos. Akómoláfé shared that when he received the invitation to talk about the chaosmos, it reminded him of something he has […]
Curated Conversations: On Harkat’s Virtual Interactive Stage with Karan Talwar
“The prelude to making theatre online shouldn’t be a compromise from doing theatre offline, but rather experimenting with something that cannot be done offline. There should be a reason for it to be on the internet and be live. There’s scope to experiment with this new language that is being developed.” – Karan Talwar. The […]
Theatre and Resistance: An Anti-Caste Perspective
What is the relationship between art and politics? Art, through creative impulse, builds bridges of expression and resonance of our shared truths. Politics provides the will to fight for these truths. The two share their roots and goals, striving toward them in their own ways. In its excess, however, art gets reduced to creation for […]
On The Other Side Of The Pandemic: Ideas, Practices We Take Ahead In Theatre
“The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.” ― John Steinbeck, Once There Was a War In March 2020, the global climate suddenly changed. It changed for the better or for worse […]
A Note From Irawati Karnik, DSM’s new Academic Head of School: ‘Hope to drive pedagogy towards a more multi-disciplinary approach’
Editor’s Note: DSM is thrilled to announce Irawati Karnik as the new Academic Head of School. Irawati has been closely associated with the school, its design, and its philosophy over the last many years. During the pandemic, she has been an amazing resource from whom we could all learn to keep the school going and […]
Curated Conversations #1 ‘Dramaturgy of Modern Resilience: Tech-o-lution’ with Amitesh Grover
Throughout history, theatre-makers have negotiated societal censure and state action when staging the political – from their content being controlled, their form and aesthetic choices being policed, their bodies in performance being monitored, and more. And yet – or may be in part because of this – theatre has always been a site of active resistance. […]
Unrehearsed Futures (Season 2) #30 Never Going Back!
Did another year just go by? It seems like it was only yesterday that we were hit by unexpected lockdowns in the tumultuous year that 2020 was, and yet here we are, bidding adieu to another year of disruptions, love and loss. The last two years have changed the way we think about theatre and […]
Trans-ing The Theatrical Canon
“Gender-neutral language isn’t about replacing an old norm with a new one. People have the right to self-determine their gender whether it be a man, woman, or a nonbinary gender. The goal of gender-neutral language is to get rid of gender normativity, not everyone’s gender.” — Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary The future of […]