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Drama Queen

@anujaghosalkar

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Performance Maker | Archive & Cinema Lover | Curator @lonelyhearts5678 Drama Queen~my performance company fuses it together~media, sites, technology.

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Making A Fist ✊🏾- An essay I wrote for the edited volume •Performing the Radical• by Ashis Sengupta. It’s part of a series called Agitations, Methuen Drama published by Bloomsbury.

Along with an excellent introduction there are essays by academics and friends I admire- @brahm.prakassh @trinanileena @aramangai and conversations with playwrights like @abhishek.majumdar.50159

My argument in the essay is about the whisper being a radical gesture of protest. I write about three productions I made with young students.
It also places at the centre the role of encampments across universities a few years ago.

So happy this is out in the world. I am not an academic but I continue to write with seriousness about theatre that is close to my beliefs. Thanks to Ashis for being such an excellent editor of my work and words.

#documentarytheatre #whisper #agitations by @anujaghosalkar

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5 months ago

I am thrilled to be finally holding a physical copy of the book edited by Kai Tuchmann and me.
It’s an intense labour of thought, practice, edits, re-edits and much bravery by all the contributors. It’s a publication that I would love for it to start conversations and think about the present moment we are living through.

In India it is available through @pressworks_store

And in January 2027 it will be OPEN ACCESS and free to download.

If someone immediately wants a copy, DM me.

We will hopefully come with the book to a city near you.

As it happens with big satisfaction comes big blows as well, this book is *dedicated to our parents*, in my case to my mother who raised me single handedly and this week I am also in the throes of extreme care giving mode to her because she is unwell. These kinds of paradoxes are hard but a part of that strange thing we call life.

#documentarytheatre #student #university by @anujaghosalkar

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a year ago

PUBLISHED- Our book *Documentary Theatre in India- Assembling Publics, Performing Politics, by [Transcript] Independent Academic Publishing.
This book is a result of a decade-long collaboration between #Kai Tuchmann and myself, creating documentary theatre works and pedagogic tools in India. It has essays, conversations, fictional scenes, theatre exercises from our collaborations with artists, academics, activists, archivists, journalists and students. This book is a foundational resource and an invitation to explore the interdisciplinary possibilities of this form, from a decidedly South Asian perspective.

We are deeply grateful to each of our contributors for their time and commitment. And our team who worked relentlessly. And our supporters @goethemumbai and @serendipityartsfoundation

We are also thrilled by the encouraging words of endorsement for the book by artists like @sunil_shanbag @shhmith and @nina.tecklenburg

-The book will be distributed worldwide to universities and libraries.
-The India distribution will happen shortly too.
-After a stipulated embargo the publication will be Open Access and free to download and read.
-*List of contributors in comments in alphabetical order*

“We hope that this volume on Documentary Theatre in India will find many readers, who will transform this written text into performances of all manner. And with that hope, we let this volume out into the world. Here’s to new imaginations! “

~~Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann, Bangalore and Berlin.

**Link in bio to buy the book**. Available @pressworks_store

#documentarytheatre #kaituchmann by @anujaghosalkar

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a year ago

This is how YouTubers fall asleep and wake up!
Channelling my (non-existent) inner YouTuber.

Unless I can crowd source ideas for an art based channel. 😀

All kidding aside. It was much needed rest (and sleep) after months.🧿

#wakeupwithme Is that a terrible hashtag?
#bedhead by @anujaghosalkar

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12 days ago

Over the past month and a half I have been part of the Creative Peers Program at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology. It’s a pilot that invites five creative practitioners to spend 3 months teaching, engaging with students, faculty and researching one’s own (new) artistic project.

The teaching has been extremely satisfying. Alongwith my agreed upon courses on Documentary Art Making I was pulled into courses on space design & (of course) an archival studies class.
It’s also given me time to test essays from our book on Documentary Theatre and an Archival Manual I had created 2 years ago at the Archives at NCBS.

Being on a campus, in conversation with students, being inspired by faculty and questioning so many of my own ideas around art and pedagogy has been refreshing.

Too early to speak about my new research project that one day, I hope will become a show. But it has to do with television 😀 and it’s history.
Almost half way through this residency and it feels like this is exactly what practitioners need— an environment to think, to have a community, to be challenged so we can make work that extends beyond our own personal limitations.

I have to give credit to the faculty that conceived this program - Amitabh, Aastha, Shanu, Siddhi. And Swati and Shai from the Film Department that are warmly hosting me.

The student as we say in our book on Documentary Theatre (Assembling Publics, Performing Politics 2025) is the most important actor of dissent and the university the best stage for it. ✊🏾 I am thrilled to be the audience. by @anujaghosalkar

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a month ago

Thank you @vikalp_bengaluru for such a warm and vibrant screening of #WorkingGirls. Thank you Bangalore for a more than full house and the deep and delighted absorption! Thank you @anujaghosalkar for a lovely and lively discussion. Thank you to old friends and new and online friend for being there IRL and selfies and outings. And thank you first and always to the many working girls of the film for sharing their felt wisdom and political articulations and changing us and how we understand (and hopefully live in) the world. #Khudkachashmabadal taken in Bangalore International Centre by @anujaghosalkar

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2 months ago

Moved two very fragile folks from Bombay to Bangalore two weeks ago. These are big decisions made by the youngest person in that family. (That goofy kid in oversized sunglasses). Family is such a strange concept, one that is impossible to get right. And yet the emotions attached to it are massive.

There are several thoughts in my mind with this decision to bring mum and brother closer to me.

The one unyielding thought has been this - Our almost life long flat was rented to a hipster, Gen Z, NRI person. Bandra as a neighbourhood over the years (over 75 years that parts of my family have lived there) has gotten more expensive.
I have bitter sweet feelings about this. No grudge against the market forces- the “subkoisation” of cities. A natural evolution/ life cycle of cities forever I guess.

We inch out and are also inched to make space for ourselves and others.

For now, the tiniest pocket of joy in the big life questions was finding (hundreds, literally) photos and albums of times past.

Posting here only a few of mum and I and of that precarious family that is trying to make their new life in Bangalore. 💜🧿🤞🏾 by @anujaghosalkar

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2 months ago

Read a play in public after ages ~ @shanks_basel’s draft of his new play The Other Side.The play’s register is dark humour and the state of the world in totalitarian times.

It was the most enjoyable evening full of levity, bonhomie and actors who read with so much joy and verve. I was meeting many of them of the first time, though they are all extremely seasoned performers.
(Maybe I need to get out more often!) And met some old friends too.

The scintillating reading was possible because we all trusted eachother and it’s perhaps only in the theatre that strangers can come together and make it happen with complete trust.

The conversations and beverages that followed after reminded me of old times in the theatre.

Thanks @shanks_basel for inviting me to read. The show opens in Basel at Kaserne in January 2027, with a cast from there, directed by Shank and Marcel.

#theotherside #darkhumourmemes #reading by @anujaghosalkar

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3 months ago

📍7 Jul | Tue | 6:30PM

➡️ Chekhov’s Bangalore

In 2008, City of Gardens was brought to the stage: a play that turned Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard into an allegory for Bangalore. Once celebrated as the Garden City of India, its rapid transformation has reshaped identities and coloured memories. Nearly two decades later, there is a lot left to say.

This panel discussion brings together Abhishek Majumdar and Anuja Ghosalkar, original cast members, moderated by Saima Dawood. Together, they will revisit what the play meant then and investigate what it means now, returning to an allegory made at the apex of neoliberal globalisation, and asking whether its prescience has only deepened with time.

Free and open to all ✉️ RSVP on the website! by @anujaghosalkar

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3 months ago

A lecture- performance called Document and Method that I did at the invitation of @aspect_p.o.d over two nights. It was attended by artists from Canada, India and Singapore. Their practices were as varied as performance art, sound, photography, dance, film and architecture. And their diverse ages and experience brought a depth of curiosity and insight.

My lecture focused on self, site and event and their interconnectedness in art making.

This the first in a series thoughtfully curated by @ragno.44me

As part of my lecture/ performance/ workshop the participants did an excercise from our book on Documentary Theatre to work with the idea of the body and site and in this case the digital frame of Zoom.
The chance and beauty that one finds through it was seen in each person’s deliberate or unwitting use of non-diegetic sound.

Such fun- the document, the method (and madness) is well and truly alive even on Zoom. What a cohort I found. 💜✊🏾 by @anujaghosalkar

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4 months ago

Slow news day and nostalgia max~ Back in the day when I was an actor in theatre. Once you start your own theatre company and write/create your own shows, getting cast in someone else’s show becomes a rarity. Not complaining but I have a *fantasy* to go to theatre auditions just for fun or for “research purposes”

Images in no particular order
1) Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo (2012) Dir: Kirtana Kumar, playwright: Dario Fo & Franca Rame
2) Creeps (2005) Dir: Atul Kumar, playwright: Lutz Hűbner
3) City of Gardens: 2008, Dir: Jisha Menon, playwrights: Jisha Menon and Abhishek Majumdar
4) Waiting for Godot 1999, Dir: Anuja Ghosalkar, playwright: Samuel Beckett by @anujaghosalkar

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4 months ago

After more than a year I am re-starting my work with children~ ready to tap into a side of me that can play again, experiment with abandon!
And many children reached out saying “can we puhlease do some theatre?” So here I am.

*Got a dramatic child?* Let’s give them a stage!
*Weekly Theatre Classes for 9+ year olds*
Starting June 19th
In Frazer Town

We’ll play with voice, dive into characters, and create stories. All to help children speak up, stand tall, and own the room.

Want to go pro? We also prep for Trinity College London Speech & Drama Exams — but only if you want to!

Led by Anuja Ghosalkar — theatremaker, mischief-maker, and mentor for 20+ years. She mixes Documentary Theatre with classic theatre games for classes that are anything but boring. Psst: lots of exercises come from her new book _Documentary Theatre In India_.

*Curious?* Message the number above for details.

— by @anujaghosalkar

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5 months ago