We decided to go online with First Draft Ideas Lab this year (after much debate!) and the response has been fantastic. We received 60 equally passionate and brilliant applications. We sincerely thank everyone for trusting us with their ideas and taking time to go through the process.Purely due to our own limitations we had to choose only 10 out of them (a significant rise from last year). We chose the ones whom we felt we could help the most through the Ideas Lab and would be perfect for the focus of the lab. It was a grueling but learning process for us.
So, here are the people who will be with us in this uncertain but rewarding journey of First Draft: Edition 2
Apeksha Vora, Laya Kumar, Maitri Das, Mallika Shah, Naveen Chand Sharma, Sarah Mariam, Sheetala Bhat, Sri Vamsi Matta, Varoon P. Anand, Vikram Phukan.
Congratulations folks! E-meet you soon!To everyone else who applied, we wish you all the best in your creative journeys.
First Draft: An Ideas Lab_Call for Applications_Edition 2
We are thrilled to announce the call for applications to First Draft – An Ideas Lab training program for the second edition.
Our first edition took place last year from May to October (2019) and due to the global pandemic crisis this year, we have decided to start the lab in September this year and conclude in Feb 2021.
The classes will be conducted online and in classrooms to be held in Bangalore. This will be assessed depending on the situation and protocols to be followed for thereafter.
Click here to read the Call for Applications in English.
Click here to read the Call for Applications in Kannada.
Last Date for Applications: June 25 ‘2020
The Lab starts from Sept 15th ‘2020.
*Please read the call for applications before applying to the lab.
*In case of any queries, please write to indianensemble@gmail.com
New additions to the company
We have a new Executive Director!
Read more here: http://indianensemble.in/news/
Exploring Exciting Texts moves on
Indian Ensemble is proud and pleased to announce that, from the month of May 2020, Exploring Exciting Texts (EET) will be run by KathaSiyah.
EET began with the idea of creating a space for critical and enriching conversations by engaging with artists, academics, thinkers and theorists to expand the discourse on creative and cultural processes, while keeping a piece of the text at the center of it. The themes we tackled included censorship, community engagement, digital humanities, philosophy, gender and sexuality, among many others. In August 2019, the curatorial reigns of the programme was handed over to Sunayana Premchander, a writer, director and also the Artistic Director of KathaSiyah, a theatre company she founded with Karen D’Mello in 2015. This shift in curatorial leadership, coupled with a newfound kindred spirit in Bangalore International Centre as a venue partner, opened up a completely new vision for the programme.
Here is the webinar link for the next one: – https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2815888548657/WN_NGpwnrqBRM2UV9hzmRN7tw
Follow KathSiyah on : https://www.facebook.com/KathaSiyah/
Next up:
Our next performance is an interactive game performance piece titled ‘Once There was a Lake’. The project is supported by India Foundation for the Arts under Project 560 grant.
Chanakya Vyas, the current Artistic Director received the Project 560 grant in October last year to develop this piece for a series of ten engagements over the period of one year in different neighborhoods such as Sarjapura, Bellandur, Agara as well as other parts of the city.
The initial date for opening was April 18th but due to the lock down, the project has been postponed until things resume to normal.
We will keep you posted!
Until then, stay home and stay safe!
To read more about the project, click below:
To read more about game based performances/theatre:
- https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/feb/08/playable-shows-are-the-future-what-punchdrunk-theatre-learned-from-video-games
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/20/how-theatre-is-taking-its-cue-from-video-games
New Writing at Studio Tamaasha
We are thrilled about this collaboration with Studio Tamaasha’s New Writing programme, where three of the plays that were developed at Indian Ensemble’s First Draft, An Ideas Lab (2019).
Saudamini Kalra’s play ‘Seb ke Beej’ was read by actors on Feb 29th.
About the play : The summer of 1995 was one of the hottest ever witnessed in New Delhi and not just because of the gruesome Tandoor murder case that became dinner time discussion in most households in the capital. India’s newly liberal economy, cable TV channels and new showrooms defined the decade in which the men of Delhi still hadn’t become epithets for toxic masculinity, unsafe streets and rape culture.
It is in the by-lanes, offices and households of such a city that the lives of a delusional father & son, a small-time journalist on a wait-list to buy a Bajaj scooter, and a trauma-tized survivor of a gang beating who wants to teach men how not to become brand-worshipping dandies, begin to entangle in disastrous ways, as they struggle to find their place within an India that doesn’t seem to account for their de-sired masculinities.
Inspired by the writings of Chuck Palahniuk, Uday Prakash and the author’s personal stories.
This play was developed at Indian Ensemble’s First Draft: An Ideas Lab, 2019
Readers:
Niketan Sharma, Dhiraj Wadhwani, Chakori Dwivedi, Shubham Chaudhary, Abhijit Singh, Trinetra Tiwari, Aaryan Tandon
Tickets: https://in.bookmyshow.com/mumbai/special/new-writing-seb-ke-beej/ET00126483
New Writing at Studio Tamaasha
We are thrilled about this collaboration with Studio Tamaasha’s New Writing programme, where three of the plays that were developed at Indian Ensemble’s First Draft, An Ideas Lab (2019).
We began with Abhimanyu Acharya’s Vesha, a contemporary play which is the story of a conflict between two heads of a Bhavai troupe, a father and a son. On the same night, they both decide to stage two different Bhavai Veshas (plays).The play oscillates between both the Veshas and probes into a fundamental question: How can one claim an identity without the stigma attached to it?
Poster Designed by : Sudharshan Krishna
More details in the event page here : https://www.facebook.com/events/588566065265102/
First Draft – Ideas Lab was designed to provide space and support to theatre makers to develop their ideas – from word, image, concept, story to a creative expression – be it in the form of text or performance.
As the end of course presentation, we felt it was apt to open doors to you, the audience, to the work of the four writers – Abhimanyu Acharya, Saudamini Kalra, Shatarupa Bhattacharyya and Usha Kattemane
Through a series of engagements – some visual, some textual, some aural – designed by the writers themselves, we hope to pique your curiosity about the themes that each of the plays addresses and of course, the excerpts of the plays themselves. We hope you will be there to watch, listen and engage the writers in conversation and of course, explore possibilities of collaboration to see these plays on stage.
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL!
Date: Oct 6th
Venue: Bangalore International Centre, Domlur 2nd Stage
Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/
Timing: 10 am – 2 pm.
Exploring Exciting Texts In Collaboration with the Bangalore International Centre
30th August’ 2019, Bangalore International Centre, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Location:https://goo.gl/maps/32EEV8oMh4wicvATA
Theme: Accessing Community Archives Through Song
A session by Shilpa Mudbi Kothakota & Adithya Kothakota
Urban Folk Project archives folk art forms in Karnataka through its contemporary production based on Yellammanaata, a ritualistic overnight play hosted mostly during the Dussera season by lower caste Hindus around parts of Hyderabad, Karnataka and the Southern Maharashtra region. Shilpa and Adithya, the creators of this project will give us a glimpse of their show as they take us through their process of archiving these forms. They’ll also talk of how the politics of a community are preserved and how they intersect with our urban sensibilities
Click here for more details:
Accessing Community Archives Through Song