If you are a performer or a theatre company or just a theatre professional, Thespo is just waiting to collaborate.
You can be from within India or outside India and we will make it work.
As a part of our collaborative projects, one can collaborate to either build a performance, or conduct a workshop, or just work with some young artists to explore and experiment with different forms of theatre making.
Over the last 11 years we have collaborated with theatre professionals from UK, USA, Brazil, Greece, and Australia. The collaborations have included working with an NGO like Kranti, or working on a performance installation, or a performance based on multimedia and so much more.
Mail to us at theatre@thespo.org for more info.
Qualities of "Mercy?"
Early 2020, while we were all coming to terms with the physical isolation Thespo found itself cconnecting with a shakespeare youth camp in vermont. What resulted of this union was digitized performance of Shakespeare’s play, “Merchant of Venice” and used the text to confront prejudice, violence, and hate speech. We dealt with the pandemic lockdown, responded to the Black Lives Matter movement, the riots within India, and put on a play. From 8,000 miles apart, we recorded our discussions and rehearsals, our discomfort and our laughter, on our laptops and phones. The many hours of material were whittled down to an hour and are to be presented in a documentary premiering on the 15th of January 5:30 AM!
Previous Collaborations:
The World That Crosses You
Renato Rocha, a Brazilian theatre maker worked with performers in Mumbai to create a 40 minute long piece based on ‘Freedom of Expression’. The collaboration brought together 12 Indian artists: actors, dancers and musicians, each with their own varied, often multilingual backgrounds and experiences. Renato created this performance in under 40 hours of rehearsal. During the process he worked with the performers to bring out their understanding of Freedom of expression and used that as a part of the performance. The performers used their personal meaning of freedom of expression and weaved them into narrative that guided the performance installation. In addition to the individual stories, Renato worked with them with exercises and movements which were all incorporated within the performance. All of these elements, with projections, made the collaboration a huge success. It has been one of the best pieces to be performed at Thespo.
Audience excerpt:
“’The World that Crosses You’ Directed by Renato Rocha deserves the highest praise. I would have paid to see this one. It was bold, poetic, heart-wrenching, reflective and a sheer joy to witness. I’d usually say that I hope this plays again so that others can experience it as well, but for once I’d like this to never be performed again, because this was unique and a once in a lifetime phenomenon. And barring myself and a few select others, NO ONE got to see it.”
– Kashin Shetty
Esteban’s Village
Matthew Wasser, from USA came down to India for 3 months. Through the course of time, he collaborated with 3 performers across Guwahati, Pune and Delhi to create a 10 minute piece. The process of creating the piece was same as rehearsing for a play, except they rehearsed virtually, via a software Matthew tried to develop. However, eventually due to several issues, the rehearsals and the show was performed via video calling facilities. Through the show the actors and the directors explored multimedia storytelling and in many ways broke space as a concept.
The show was successful in widening the scope of technology and multimedia in theatre. The performance was followed by a conversation with Matthew and Vikrant Dhote, the director of the piece. One of the main aims of this collaboration was to make it a starting point of a conversation, about how technology can be an interesting tool to create theatre and challenge the space and time dimensions.