M D Pallavi: Creative Journey

Toto Funds the Arts

and

Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore 

are delighted to invite you to

Creative Journeys 

a talk by celebrated singer, actor and filmmaker

M D Pallavi  

Date: Saturday, 18 August 2018.  

Time: 6.30 p.m.

Venue: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, 716, CMH Road, Indiranagar 1^st Stage, Bangalore 560 038

MD PALLAVI negotiates multiple artistic fields with ease. Trained in Hindustani classical music, she went on to win a clutch of awards for Best Playback Singer in the Kannada film industry and make a name for herself in theatre, television and cinema. Notable among her international stage performances are the hugely popular Boy with a Suitcase, which has toured all over India and Germany, and C Sharp C Blunt for which she won the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards for Best Actress. 

Pallavi’s anecdotal talk, illustrated with photographs and video clips, and interspersed with live singing, will describe her stage and screen career, from her national and international concerts and her musical collaborations to her acting, directing and screenwriting experiences.

This is the ninth talk in TFA’S Creative Journeys Series.  Previous speakers have been Gieve Patel, Sunil Shanbag, Surupa Sen, Jitish Kallat, Sampurna Chattarji,  Susmit Sen, Neel Choudhary and the Tadpole Repertory, and Jayant Kaikini

This Series provides a platform for both younger and more experienced writers, filmmakers, performing artists and visual artists to speak about the influences, impulses, processes and thinking that have shaped the art they produce

Anju Alva Naik's 'OK, That's Enough': Rehearsed Reading

Toto Funds the Arts & The British Council Library

are pleased to invite you to

A rehearsed reading of the play

 OK, That’s Enough 

by Anju Alva Naik

Performed by Samudyatha Jayanthi, 

Deepak Hariharan & Anusri Menon

Date and Time:  Saturday 16 September 2017, 6.30 p.m.

Venue:  The British Council Library, Prestige Takt, 23 Kasturba Road Cross (Opposite Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum), Bengaluru

About the play:

OK, That’s Enough is a psychological drama that foregrounds sexuality, both its assertion and its repression. A rape and its aftermath overturn the lives of two women in their early twenties. Strange contradictions emerge, tropes and stereotypes are questioned, and hypocrisies are stripped bare. Choice, Courage and Consent take on unconventional dimensions as the play unfolds, making it as much a story about self-discovery as it is about self-destruction.

Anju Alva Naik is a Bangalore-based theatre practitioner. She won 'Best Actress' in 2011 at the Short and Sweet theatre festival, has taken part in intensive workshops in directing, performance, voice and playwriting, and played a significant part in eight theatre productions. She directed her first play, The Cockroach Collector by Anushka Ravishankar, after undergoing an eight-month Indian Ensemble Directors Training Programme mentored by Abhishek Majumdar. OK, That’s Enough came out of a 14-week Playwrights Training Programme that she attended, also under Majumdar’s mentorship.

Dialogue for the Stage: Workshop by Abhishek Majumdar

Toto Funds the Arts

& the British Council Library

are pleased to offer

‘Dialogue for the Stage’

a two-day workshop for budding playwrights  

Facilitator:  Abhishek Majumdar 

Venue: British Council Library, Prestige Takt, 23 Kasturba Road Cross (Opposite Visvesvaraiah Industrial and Technological Museum), Bangalore

Dates:  5 and 6 August 2017 (Saturday and Sunday)

Timing:  10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days

Fee: Rs 3,500

(Rs 3,200 for members of the British Council Library)

Deadline for applications: 27 July

The two-day workshop will look at different kinds of dialogue-writing techniques using examples from a variety of plays. It will also look at the difference between dialogue that leaves a lot unsaid and dialogue that creates poetic exposition. Most importantly, it will work towards making playwrights aware of how they can think about dialogue – as rhetoric, argument, music and image. 

The workshop will involve writing, reading, performing and a lot of homework. 

It is important to note that the workshop will focus only on writing dialogue for the stage, not for film or television.

Participants will be required to bring their laptops and other writing implements such as pen and paper (we shall send you a list before the commencement of the workshop).

The workshop will be limited to 12 participants between the ages of 18 and 35. Applications should be sent to sarita.tfaindia@gmail.com along with a short bio-note and a few lines about why you would like to attend the workshop. 

Participants are requested to make their own arrangements for lunch. Coffee and snacks will be provided. 

About Abhishek Majumdar

Abhishek Majumdar is a playwright and theatre director based in Bangalore. He is the artistic director of the Indian Ensemble. His plays have been performed both nationally and internationally. Abhishek has trained in Delhi, Pondicherry, and Bangalore. He also is an alumnus of the London International School of Performing Arts. Abhishek has received the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship, the Inlaks Scholarship, the Lispa Scholarship, and the Robert Bosch Arts Grant. He is a member of the Young Vic Director’s network, London and was at the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab in 2012.

Creative Journey 7: Tadpole Repertory

Toto Funds the Arts

&

British Council Library, Bangalore

are delighted to invite you to

the seventh talk of our series Creative Journeys

by

Neel Chaudhuri, Bikram (Momo) Ghosh and Kriti Pant

(co-founders of The Tadpole Repertory)

This creative journey will focus on The Tadpole Repertory, a Delhi-based theatre collective of actors, writers, musicians and designers. Neel Chaudhuri will speak about his association with Tadpole as a writer and director, while Bikram Ghosh and Kriti Pant will talk about their role as actors in the Repertory.

Date: Sunday, 22 January 2017.  Time: 6.30 p.m.

Venue: British Council Library, Prestige Takt, 23, Kasturba Road Cross (Opposite Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum)

NEEL CHAUDHURI is a playwright, and founder and artistic director of The Tadpole Repertory. The group is dedicated to presenting original writing and devised performances on compelling subjects. Neel studied history and film and was the artistic director of The First City Theatre Foundation from 2006 to 2009 when he wrote and directed his first five plays. His work includes Taramandal, winner of the Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award in 2010; Still and Still Moving (2011), developed in collaboration with the Royal Court Theatre in London; and most recently, A Brief History of the Pantomimes. Neel is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors Lab in New York, and PLUTO, a coalition of international theatre directors. He is currently touring with This Will Only Take Several Minutes, a collaboration between Tadpole and Hanchu-Yuei, a theatre collective from Tokyo.

BIKRAM (MOMO) GHOSH is an actor, storyteller and Tadpole’s company manager. He works with young people in schools and workshops, builds comedy revues and writes short stories for children. He is also the director of NDLS, a variety sketch show about life in Delhi.

KRITI PANT is an actor who works across different styles, media and communities.  Her past stage work ranges from the Shakespeare in Schools project to Patrick Marber’s Closer. Kriti has toured North America as an actor in Tim Supple's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Theatre MXT’s Success.

Creative Journeys is a series of talks, providing a platform for young and experienced writers, filmmakers, performing artists and visual artists to speak about the influences, impulses, processes and thinking that have shaped the art they produce. 

Previous speakers have been Gieve Patel, Sunil Shanbag, Surupa Sen, Jitish Kallat, Sampurna Chattarji and Susmit Sen.

Play Reading: Parvathy Raveendran's 'The Witches'

Toto Funds the Arts

and 

British Council Library

are pleased to invite you to 

A rehearsed reading of Parvathy Raveendran’s play 

The Witches 

Directed by Abhishek Majumdar, award-winning playwright and director, the reading will be performed by Cathy Laby, Surabhi Herur, Nishant Seth, Tony Xavier, Abhijit Pakrashi, Ajay Kshatriya and Sunayna Premchander

Sound: Abhijit Pakrashi and Nishant Seth

Date and Time:  Saturday, 25 July 2015, 6.30 p.m.

Venue:  The British Council Library, Prestige Takt, 23 Kasturba Road Cross, Bangalore (Opposite Visveswaraiah Industrial and Technological Museum)

About the play

The Witches is a play in nine scenes that unfolds as a series of dream sequences—memories re-enacted in the mind of the protagonist as she confronts an intense episode of her childhood. The narrative shifts in time between the 1970s in Kerala and the present day. Exploring the themes of love and its abuse, madness and sanity, history and memory, it draws references from literature, myth, and history to negotiate these ideas, and relies on a stage design based on the game of hopscotch to play them out.

PARVATHY RAVEENDRAN is a writer and theatre enthusiast who currently teaches at Head Start Educational Academy in Bangalore. While a student at the Department of English in the University of Delhi she was awarded a Charles Wallace grant in 2010 for travel and research in the UK. Over the past years her growing interest in theatre has led her to explore various facets of theatre making—from writing and directing to nonverbal languages of performance as an actor. She looks forward to a long-term and more holistic engagement with theatre, integrating elements from her other interests such as art history and the visual arts, dance and pedagogy.  

TFA Theatre Workshop

Toto Funds the Arts invites you to a one-day theatre workshop to be conducted by Shekhar Seshadri. Based on Augusto Boal's techniques, the workshop will specifically focus on his "Joker System" and culminate in a performance piece for an invited audience.

Shekhar will chose a broad theme for the workshop around which, through the day, there will be scene work, movement, dialogue and image work. As the workshop proceeds, the performance piece will be constucted and linkages established. The "Joker System" itself is based on developing new texts or converting extant texts into performances that follow a series of seven steps: Dedication, Explanation, Scene, Episode, Interview, Commentary, Exhortation.

The workshop attendees need not have any formal theatre or dance experience. The emphasis is more on process than outcome. The final performance is only a bonus.

Date: Sunday October 3

Venue: Centre for Film and Drama, 5th Floor, Sona Towers, Cunningham Road

Fee: Rs 1,400 (includes lunch, tea and dinner)

Maximum number of participants: 25


Send your cheques made out to Toto Funds the Arts, by ordinary post or courier, to Toto Funds the Arts, H-301 Adarsh Gardens, 47th Cross, 8th Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore 560082.