Vaishnavi is a performing artist with an early training in Bharatanatyam from the young age of 4. Her work is led by curious explorations at the intersection of human psychology, physiology & cultural imprint; often leaning towards creating large scale images made from accessible objects or material and movement. 

Vaishnavi enjoys mixing mediums and resists limitations set by forms or norms. Improvising with different forms of music, visuals, shadows, and poetry is another form of expression she engages in. These works are often performed in intimate spaces like boxes, drawing rooms or terraces, or unexpected spaces like bars/ cafes and public parks.

View Vaishanavi’s improvs here:
+ Flashbulb: Undiscovered Colours
+ Trippy Tales Chapter One

One of Vaishnavi’s current passions is a piece called Cat’s Cradle, which was created in 2018 through the course Body, Space & Time at Gati Dance Forum, with the help of mentors like Mandeep, Deepak, Ranjana, Navtej, Surjit, Preeti Attreya & Mini, and her co-performer, Greeny Francis. The piece, through a scaled-up and embodied game of the Cat’s Cradle, explores the complex interdependency of two entities in a given space and its Gestalten effects on the performers and audience alike. 

Cat’s Cradle has been graciously supported and hosted by many people and places over the last 3 years. Vaishnavi is currently working on expanding this piece and also exploring new concepts that have risen from solitary contemplations facilitated and forced upon by the lockdown.

Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry has a Master’s degree in the History of Arts as well as a diploma from the National School of Drama.  In 1979, she moved to Bhopal and was attached to The Rang Mandal, a theatre repertory attached to the Multi-arts Complex, Bharat Bhavan. In 1984, she moved to Chandigarh where she set up her own theatre company called ‘The Company.’ Parallely, she has also been teaching in the Department of Indian Theatre, Panjab University and was also the Chairperson.  

Dr. Chowdhry’s well-known plays include Kitchen Katha, The Suit, Yerma,  Nagamandala,  The Madwoman of Chaillot, Little Eyolf, Bitter Fruit and Naked Voices, Gumm Hai, and Black Box,  to name a few . The group has participated in major national and international festivals.

Dr. Chowdhry is the recipient of several awards including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2003, and the  Padma Shri in 2011. She is presently Professor Emeritus at Panjab University.

Amruta is a freelance artist, teacher and performer, currently based in Mumbai. She graduated from Mumbai University with an MA in Theatre Arts, and has since trained and practiced within various performance disciplines from around the world. She is also a graduate of The DUENDE School of Ensemble Physical Theatre.  

​Born in Ratnagiri, a small town in the belt of Konkan Region of Maharashtra, India, Amruta began her theatre studies at home with her father, who was involved in folk and regional theatre. Since then, she has never doubted what she wants to do with her life.

​Amruta’s focus lies in exploring the integration of Body and Mind,  on creating body-mind awareness and mindfulness through interdisciplinary practices, including Tai-Chi, Kalari, Clowning, Dance. From such foundations, she finds the freedom to (create) work that respects the complexity of expressions in the body, and how to shape expression into performance.

As an interdisciplinary teacher/facilitator,  Amruta aims to create strong physical awareness and presence, not only with actors but also youngsters. Her work explores existing social/cultural paradigms and discourses concerning relationships between body and mind, seeking to bridge the gap between body and mind created by dominant structures in society.​ Her clown work, by spreading laughter, aims to improve mental health of underpreviliged kids, including children of sex workers or those in juvenile home and for women rescued from trafficking.

In 2019 Amruta was the first (and only one yet) to be awarded the Julie Goell Eccentric Woman Scholarship. She was recently awarded Maharashtra Cultural Center’s RANGSETU fellowship for her work in Clowning.

Amba is an alumnus of LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, London UK). She is a theatre maker, performer, teacher, workshop facilitator and director. 

She hopes to create theatre that challenges and investigates our times. ‘What is the world and what is our place within it?’, is the question she aims to continue to explore, with and through her work.

Amba continues her overseas collaborations in the UK and US. Her recent work during the pandemic in 2020 includes a virtual theatre experiment – What you will – a devised show in collaboration with The Shakespeare Ensemble, UK. And more recently in 2021, Interwebs, a project built in collaboration with Walkabout Theatre, Chicago with whom she has been working regularly in the US over the last 4 years.

For close to a decade now Amba has been conducting workshops for both adults and children and has also been a regular visiting faculty at DSM, Mumbai, where she taught Shakespeare in Performance.

Amba founded the Guild of the Goat in 2017 with RUDY to create work that is exciting, relevant, contemporary and makes us all question ourselves and the world we inhabit. The company chooses not to have a unifying artistic vision or trademark aesthetic. The guild of practitioners with diverse training, experiences and approaches, the company finds strength in its diversity and aspires to create work and build audiences which are also diverse.

Max is an artist, performer and teacher from Wasserburg am Inn (Germany). He dedicated himself to improv theatre following extended experience in classical theatre, performing both with his own group as well as with different ensembles. In addition, Max has trained as a clown, learned mask play and construction in Canada and has worked with teachers from all over the world. 

For the last few years he has been devoting himself mainly to performance and teaching. He is also active, including in India, with Clowns Without Borders.

Max’s focus is on the individual performer. He is aware, from experience, of how important it is to find one’s own style. As an artist, he feels it is crucial not to be pressed or place oneself into a prefabricated scheme and that one has to find one’s own way.

Max believes that it is important to not segregate art forms; that experiences in diverse disciplines, even seemingly unrelated ones, make up the complete artist. For him, while everyone is unique in their own way, there is no such thing as the clown, the performer or the dancer. Training as a clown, in bodywork or dance has an impact on the artist  and thus on every performance.

As a teacher, Max emphasizes on basic skills, while also supporting each learner individually in their development. This approach, he believes, helps everyone find  pleasure in their work and inner peace. 

Max set up – atelier i42 – his own artist studio with workshop space – in the beginning of 2021.

Preeti started her career working with hotels after her graduation in Hotel Management from WGSHA Manipal. Being intrigued by the people management aspect of business she soon moved to further studies and did her M.A. in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations from TISS. She then worked in different aspects of HR Operations in the Pharmaceutical and the Oil and Gas sector in India and SouthEast Asia for over 15 years.

Preeti has trained in Bharatnatyam in her early years and pursued theatre with Ekjute Group, while working a day job in Mumbai. This new experience as an actor, inspired her to explore the role that theatre and other expressive art forms could play towards personal and group transformation. In 2015 she moved on from her corporate role to delve further into this realm. 

Preeti has explored different forms of expression to deepen her learning as an artist and a facilitator. Playback theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, Psycho-physical theatre, Movement therapy, Eurythmy, Human Process Work and Professional Co-Active Coaching are key areas she spent time learning and integrating in her work. She believes that exploratory media, such as theatre, art and movement, help to make the process of diagnosis, explorations and creative resolutions holistic.

In 2016, Preeti created a playback theatre ensemble, Mumbai Playbackers with her workshop participants. They have performed in art festivals & public places, with corporates & NGOs, at homes & educational institutions, and, over the past year, have been creating online experiences. 

In 2019, Preeti founded empurple as an umbrella organization offering interactive performances, group facilitation and individual coaching. She is now in her final year of training in Eurythmy, a unique movement form that makes speech and music visible while working on self development. 

Preeti, through her work, now aspires to facilitate access to spontaneous energy and resonant listening spaces through art. Her endeavour is for people to integrate art into business and everyday life to provide the much needed nourishment and sensitivity towards self and others. She is also seeding intentions for an interdisciplinary project to manifest space for exchange of personal stories to work with healing the wounds of history – personal and collective. This “third career” phase, while still nascent, has been the most exciting, unnerving and satisfying and Preeti looks forward to the journey ahead.

Maya is a theatre maker and teacher. She devises performances that range from dance theatre to comedy and live media. Her teaching practice focuses on the areas of performance making and applied theatre. Her long training in Kathakali in her childhood continues to be an inspiration in making contemporary performances.

Maya’s shows have travelled the world and she has been commissioned to create performances for prestigious theatre festivals at home and abroad. Some of her celebrated shows are, ‘Khol Do’, ‘The Job’, ‘A Deep Fried Jam’, ‘Heads Are Meant for Walking Into’, ‘The Non – Stop Feel Good Show’, ‘Are You Home, Lady Macbeth?’, ‘Ravanama’, ‘Loose Woman’ and ‘Walk’ that was created in response to the horrific gang rape and eventual tragic death of Jyoti Singh. The performance went viral on social network sites.

Since 2012 Maya has also been making performances at short notice – sometimes just a day – around issues of public concern, ranging from the threat to the RTI Act to mob lynching.

Maya taught in the National School of Drama for several years. Subsequently, she was professor in the Department of Arts, Design and Theatre at the Shiv Nadar University where she designed and taught a post-graduate Diploma TEST – Theatre for Education and Social Transformation. Currently, she is visiting faculty at Ashoka University where she teaches performance skills. 

Maya was given the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Acting in 2010 which she returned in 2015, in response to the government’s indifference to rising intolerance in the country.

Since the lockdown Maya’s work has moved in new directions. She has created a pandemic character, Paru, who gives us her unique, sharply political (and funny) perspective on this changed world we find ourselves in through short podcasts. Maya has also created, along with a visual designer, a series of short videos on themes of current concern. Over the past year she has been invited by universities and other arts related institutions across the world to teach and give online talks.

Thommen Ollapally is the Director of Shoonya – Centre for Art and Somatic Practices. He is also in the family property development business which builds apartment communities in Bangalore.

Thommen feels strongly about finding ways to help Bangalore’s artistic and cultural growth keep pace with its financial and technological growth. Thommen has dabbled in various art forms including metal sculpture, the classical guitar and theater. Some day he hopes to start a line of contemporized veshtis for the young urban Indian.

Founded in 2014 by the Ollapally family in memory of Joseph Ollapally, Shoonya is a non-profit, multi-arts centre in the heart of Bangalore on Lalbagh Road. A light-filled space surrounded by beautiful palm trees, Shoonya is envisioned to be a platform for art and somatic practices.

The center has been thoughtfully designed for people of different artistic disciplines and somatic practices to create, connect and collaborate. Shoonya offers a space for artists and the community to engage; an open and nourishing environment for people from diverse cultures and ages to impart knowledge and share experiences around creativity, performance, holistic health and education.

A space to learn, explore and experience, Shoonya seeks to further the growth of the arts and somatic practices through carefully curated programmes as well as by supporting practitioners and artists in meaningful ways. The center’s vision is to increase community participation in these areas and enable collaborations on a national and international level.