A Theatre Festival at Sabha, Bengaluru from 21st - 28th November 2026.

PLAYINTERPLAY is a theatre festival with a difference. It celebrates 50 year of the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, bringing together its theatre awardees and scholars to show their work, share their experiences, skills and learnings, and converse on matters of common interest.

PLAYINTERPLAY presents plays that are new to Bengaluru. What is different, however, is that it looks back as well as forward, featuring a work of theatre that has been specially revived for the festival and readings of plays that are still to become the finished article.

PLAYINTERPLAY does more: it forges connections between its constituent parts — performances, workshops, conversations and experience sharing — emphasising the interplay between thought, learning and practice.See the plays! Apply for the workshops! Join the conversations! Soak in the magic of theatre.

Chairperson of the Foundation, Azad Shivdasani will make the opening remarks and the Artistic Director of the festival, Anmol Vellani will share his curatorial vision

Saturday, 21st November,
4.30 p.m. – 5.00 p.m.

Held every year since 2023, the Inlaks Theatre Showcase offers a platform for the recipients of the theatre opportunities of that particular year to present their work. This year’s showcase features the three 2026 theatre awardees K Nagaraj, Revathy Mol AT and Rahul Joshi, presenting their performances based on a traditional instrument Chowdike, Kerala’s oral traditions, and clowning, respectively. This year’s showcase has been directed by 2016 Inlaks theatre awardee Kiyomi Mehta.

Saturday, 21st November,
5.15 p.m. – 6.15 p.m.

Ek Mulaqat Manto Se unpacks the enigma and idiosyncrasies of Saadat Hasan Manto while reflecting on the life and times of a great writer who was deeply traumatised by the partition of the Indian sub-continent.

Directed and performed by Ashwath Bhatt

Language: Hindi, Urdu

Saturday, 21st November,
7.00 p.m. – 8.00 p.m.

A workshop introducing children to the interactive form of Playback Theatre, encouraging them to value their own experiences while also learning to respect the experiences of others. It is designed to nurture confidence, empathy, imagination and communication skills.

Facilitated by Syed Sadiq S.

Saturday and Sunday, 21st and 22nd November,
10.00 a.m. - 3.00 p.m.

This workshop explores the immense possibilities of the performer’s body and mind, and the relationship between the body, space and the world around us. Through observation, physical exploration and play, participants will draw from external influences, allowing them to become internal impulses and material for performance.

Facilitated by Tushar Pandey

Sunday, 22nd November,
9.00 a.m. - 3.00 p.m.

Bhima portrays the second Pandava, conflicted and caught in the middle of battles, carrying the literal and metaphorical weight of his family’s collective choices and torn between obligation and desire.

Co-devised and co-performed by Vivek Vijayakumaran

Language: English

Sunday, 22nd November,
6.00 p.m. - 7.10 p.m.

Three theatre artists will speak about what attracted them to physical theatre and describe the nature of their involvement in the teaching and practice of this stylised form of performance. They will also discuss the limits of physical theatre and the creative strategies that can prevent style from overshadowing substance.    

Participants: Tushar Pandey, Ashwath Bhatt and Vivek Vijayakumaran

Moderated by: Anmol Vellani

Sunday, 22nd November,
7.30 p.m. - 9.00 p.m.

We all have a clown hiding within us. During this workshop, an inner clown character will be born through an organic process based on both eastern and western techniques. Participants will gain clarity about the rules and tools of clowning, so that they can embark on clown exploration with courage.

Facilitated by Ashwath Bhatt

Monday to Wednesday, 23rd to 25th November,
10.00 a.m. - 3.00 p.m.

This interactive workshop, comprising theatre games, group exercises, improvisation and practical discussions, will explore ways of creating, producing, touring and sustaining a theatre with limited resources. It will look at audience-building, working collaboratively, mobility, and developing practical models that are both artistically meaningful and financially viable.

Co-facilitated by Pratiksha Khasnis

Monday to Thursday, 23rd to 26th November,
4.00 p.m. - 7.00 p.m.

Uncle Dance explores personal struggles with patriarchy and with dance, enquiring into the quintessential uncle and the role of power and security in relationships and on the dance floor.

Conceived and performed by Pranjal Vaid

Language: Hindi, English

Age Limit: Above 18 years

Monday, 23rd November,
6.00 p.m. - 6.45 p.m.

Dr. Sahana Pinjar will present a live demonstration of the traditional Kannada folk theatre form of Bayalata through the performance of Girija Kalyana, depicting the divine marriage of Girija (Parvati) and Lord Shiva. The demonstration will showcase the storytelling, acting, dialogue, music, costumes and theatrical conventions of Bayalata, bringing the story to life for a contemporary audience.

Monday, November 23rd,
7.00 p.m. - 8.00 p.m.

In Mirage, Sanjeya, the royal chronicler and advisor to King Dhritarashtra, is on his deathbed and begins to narrate the tale of the war again — only this time, the tale is replete with events and details that he chose not to reveal during the war.

Written by Laya N Kumar

Language: English

Tuesday, 24th November,
7.30 p.m. - 8.15 p.m.

The Death of Galileo starts with a project to erase memory. It ends by suggesting that the fight for truth, whether it is Galileo’s or our own, comes down to courageous storytelling. When the past is threatened, who will be brave enough to step up and tell its story?

Directed by Rajkumar Rajak

Language: Hindi

Wednesday, 25th November,
7.30 p.m. - 8.50 p.m.

This introductory workshop is designed to give participants a practical understanding of the role of a stage manager and the stage management process in theatre. It will introduce participants to the role and responsibilities of a stage manager across the different stages of a production, organisational tools, communication practices, crisis management and more.

Facilitated by Abhishek Mudgal

Thursday to Saturday, 26th to 28th November,
10.00 a.m. - 3.00 p.m.

Two playwrights will read excerpts from their science fiction plays and converse on the nature of the genre, their inspiration and influences, the unique challenges of writing science fiction for the theatre and more.

Participants: Abhishek Majumdar and Meghna Roy Choudhury

Moderated by Anmol Vellani

Thursday, 26th November,
5.00 p.m. - 6.30 p.m.

Goonj ka Ghar weaves three seminal short stories  — Tirichh by Uday Prakash, Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto, and Uljhan by Vijaydan Detha — into a single theatrical narrative that interrogates unresolved questions about identity, belonging, marginalisation and justice in today’s world.

Production co-ordinated by Sanyukta Saha

Language: Hindi 

Thursday, 26th November,
7.30 p.m. - 8.20 p.m.

This session will investigate what might lie inside any theatre institution that could threaten its stability and hamper its growth. Reflecting on their personal experience of founding and running institutions, three theatre artists will tell us about what worked or did not work about the choices they made.

Participants: Abhishek Mudgal, Sanyukta Saha and Abhishek Majumdar

Moderated by Priyanka Varma

Friday, 27th November,
5.00 p.m. - 6.30 p.m.

Kadambari is a lyrical theatrical journey into the silenced life of Kadambari Devi, Rabindranath Tagore’s critic, muse, companion, and sister-in-law. Rather than reducing her to a footnote in his biography, the play restores her voice, weaving memory, fiction and imagination.

Written and directed by Meghna Roy Choudhury

Language: Hindi, Bengali

Friday, 27th November,
7.30 pm - 9.00 p.m.

In this session, Vardhan Deshpande will share his journey with Dramatherapy and its possibilities as a practice of healing, expression and transformation. He will share key experiences from his practice, and also look towards the future — considering how Dramatherapy and Applied Theatre can evolve in working with children and communities, and the ethical, creative and contextual sensitivities that such practice demands.

Saturday, 28th November,
3.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m.

The theatre artists in this session will speak about their idea of tradition and how they have interacted with it in the plays they have written, directed or performed. They will also be invited to discuss ethical and political questions that come to the fore when tradition is brought into contemporary theatre work.

Participants: Sharanya Ramprakash, Laya N Kumar and Parshaty J Nath

Moderated by Lakshmana KP

Saturday, 28th November,
4.30 p.m. - 6.00 p.m.

Stories That Once Sang is a musical performance for children, which moves through animal and human worlds and combines myth, rhythm and memory to tell stories of wandering songs, friendship, and the places we call home.

Following the performance, an interactive workshop will invite the children to explore movement, rhythm, voice and imagination, and find their own stories of belonging, home and what we carry with us.

Performed by Sachin Ravindran

Language: English
Songs: Multilingual

Saturday, 28th November
Performance: 5.00 p.m. - 5.45 p.m.
Workshop: 5.45 p.m. – 6.15 p.m.

Over the course of a 60-minute audition, an actor navigates the full range of his performative self. As memory, desire, myth, cinema and conditioning collide, the audition room becomes a space where masculinity is continuously performed, interrogated and disrupted. Blending humour, discomfort, role-play and self-examination, Full Frontal asks what it means to be a man in India today.

Co-created and performed by Abhay Mahajan
Co-created by Sharanya Ramprakash

Language: English

Saturday, 28th November,
7.30 p.m. - 8.30 p.m.