Thank you for making Thespo 25 a success
Aakash Parekh
Aaranya Studios
Abhishek Goel
Abhishek Majumdar
Aditi Ravi
Akarsh Khurana
Alefia Merchant
Alistar Bennis
Alyque Padamsee
Amanda Padamsee
Amatulla Zakir
Ameet & Maya
Amol Parashar
Ananya Rane
Anjum Rajabali
Anshulika Dubey
Anuj Gupta
Anurag Kedia
Apaar Bhandari
Aparna Piramal Raje
Arjun and Masumeh
Arti M
Artistic Humans
Asad Lalljee
Ashwin Jyoti
Asif Ali Beg
Atul Mongia
Ayan
Ayesha Kaur Kundra
Ayesha Sayani
Bhavna Pani
Bhuvan Jain
Bijoy Idicheriah
Bittu Sahgal
Bruce Guthrie
Camille Sheth
Christopher Samuel
Coconut Productions
Daniel Bye
Deepika Amin
Denzil Smith
Devaiah Bopanna
Dhanika Naik U
Dia Mirza
Dipti Rao
Divyesh Vijayakar
Dolly Thakore
Esha Patil
Esmie Jacob
Faezeh Jalali
Farah Bala
Farrokh 'Mugsy' Mehta
Gayathri Krishna
Goldwin Fonseca
Gulshan Devaiah
Harishri
Henna Singh
Jaimini Pathak
Johnson Veigas
Karan Shetty
Karthik evam Sunill
Kavita Puri Arora
Keith Stevenson
Kunaal Roy Kapur
Leena Tawate
Leena Tawate
Mantra
Mayur N Shetty
Mehernosh Bharucha
Motley Productions
Naseeruddin Shah
Navroz Seervai
Niloufer Sagar
Nipun Kedia
Nirmala Rao
Nitin Batra
Padraig Cusack
Parul Shah
Pawan Kumar
Poornima Pandey
Priti Bakalkar
Raaghav Chanana
Rage Foundation
Raghunandan Maluste
Rahul Bose
Rama Devi Jhala
Ravikiran Kantamneni
Renuka Joshi
Robbin Singh
Roger Pereira
Rohan Kawley
Roshan Abbas
Roshan Gaikwad
Ruchika Chanana
Rupangi Sharma
S V Siva
Saatvika Kantamneni
Sachin Agarwal
Salil Shah
Sandeep Sanapuji
Saurabh Agarwal
Shabana Azmi
Shanta Gokhale
Shashank Jayakumar
Shimlli Basu
Shireen Mistry
Shivani Mistry
Shrimati Manorama Devi Charitable Trust
Shruti Sridharan
Shubh Gosalia
Shweta Tripathi
Sid Siva
Simeon Bosco Fernandes
Simi
Smriti Sangam
Sneha U
Sonal Gopujkar
Sonal Khale
Sonia George
Suchitra Pillai
Sunil Shanbag
Suyash Rajpurohit
Tanay Salil Shah
Tanvi
Tina Nagpaul
TINNUTS
Uma da Cunha
Varun Gupta
Vasudev Badethalav
Vidisha Kanchan
Vivek Gomber
Vivek Madan
Yash Thakkar
Zeus Paranjape
Welcome to Thespo 25!
The year seems to have flown by at record speed. Our regular community events - Saturday Open Houses, Thespo Reads, Thespo Listens, Theatre Bugs - were already on a roll. We entered July, and bam! First Calls. Registrations. Travel Schedules. Screening. Everything happened in quick succession and the clock kept ticking faster.
With schedules locked, venues finalised and tickets booked, the festival curators, Siddhesh Purkar and Priti Bakalkar, set off to interact with more than a thousand young theatre makers in October. They travelled across 13 cities in a span of a month to watch almost a hundred plays in 17 languages and dialects. As this expedition came to an end - the festival curation came into being.
Each play at the festival takes us on a unique journey. From reinterpreting mythology in Glitch in the Myth (Mumbai) and exploring folklore in Shim Cheong (Bengaluru) to finding fun in funerals in A Study of Fear (Mumbai), to taking to the streets in protest in जो ग़ाएब भी है हाज़िर भी (Lucknow). It is all there. Hindi, English, Urdu, Arabic and even Korean! KOREAN? That’s a first. How exciting and overwhelming!
The Thespo 25 mantra - हर रंग का मंच - shines through across the festival. Emerging theatre makers can train for tomorrow in diverse aspects of theatre with the wide array of workshops on offer. Experimental work finds a voice at the Fringe performances in Prithvi House. The platform performances in the foyer promise something for everyone and you are invited to spend the afternoons reading plays at the Prithvi Adda, where we throw a spotlight on the works of Satish Alekar - who will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Awards Night.
And if this is not enough, you can head to Juhu Beach, a hop-skip-jump away from Prithvi. Here, Damodharan K, Jino and Rahul Mangesh with their ‘Tables & Stools’, are eagerly waiting to be an audience to your story. And early mornings, you will also find Faezeh Jalali here, leading a bunch of young Kalari kalakars for a performance at the festival. And then, from the other side of the sea, Team Stages from Sri Lanka have joined us to work with Indian artists to create a devised piece. And if you are wondering how we are making all of this happen, the collaboration with Mohammed Lehry is all about Telling Your Own Story with little or no resources! Honestly, it is a little too serendipitous.
None of this would have been possible without our community of ‘Friends of Thespo’. Thanks to their incredible show of love, support and funding, Thespo 25 includes 18 performances, 7 workshops, 5 play readings and 4 collaborations in 6 languages with participants from over 20 cities in 3 countries!
And YOU are invited! Welcome to the Thespo tribe.
Cheers,
Team Thespo.