Our Collaborators
Anish Victor is a theatre actor, theatre activist and theatre reformer. He is Co-founder of the Bangalore-based organisation Rafiki. While Anish has worked with all ages and all genders, his strength lies in sharing the joys and challenges of theatre with children and young adults, with a special focus on autistic children. His training includes various forms, such as devarattam, silambattam and tai chi qigong. Whenever he finds a bit of time, he takes refuge in his guitar.
Basvachar S has over 30 years of experience in print making. He has taught at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Arena animation and other government colleges inspiring students to express themselves through print making. His love for designing and conserving manual printing presses led him to co-found Atelier Prati, a print making studio in Bangalore.
Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy is a contemporary performing artist from Bangalore, India. He has been engaged in artistic work as a performer, creator, and teacher since 2000. His work spans dance, choreography, and documentary filmmaking. He uses movement as a tool to investigate complex relationships and power dynamics, often drawing from his own lived experiences. His recent work, Nobody Cares,confronts the audience with chaos, comedy and cacophony amidst the social signifiers, as they are attached to an individual.
Nellai Manikandan is a renowned teacher of the South Indian art forms of Devarattam, Oyillatam, Karagam, Thappattam and Silambam. Master Nellai Manikandan is known for implementing contemporary teaching methodologies in order to impart effective training in traditional folk art forms to his students. He has been teaching, taking workshops, and been part of theatre productions and films since 1996.
Naren is a folk artist, percussionist with a background in theatre and performing arts. He is founder of Adavi Arts Collective, committed to promoting and revitalising folk arts. Their vision is to cultivate a society free from discrimination, one where equality transcends caste, gender, colour, religion, race, class, and creed. Naren plays Parai, a traditional Indian percussion instrument popular in the South of India, which was once stigmatised, relegated to communities considered “untouchable” in the caste hierarchy. Naren and his collective are dedicated to making the instrument resonate with calls for social equality, respect, and the preservation of the art form.
Maraa is a media and arts collective, founded in 2008. Our arts and media practices are located at the intersection of gender, labour, caste and religion, rather than in a thematic focus on issues. We highlight imaginations and histories that are systematically suppressed, censored and reductively framed. Our work involves research, writing and documentation as well as curation, practice and production. We are attentive to differences in lived experience, worldviews and aspirations that can challenge the dominant frames within which knowledge is produced. We highlight daily discrimination, violence, resistance and resilience. We are committed to theatre as a form of assertion against oppression and a space of radical collectivisation.
