DIRECTOR
Sankar Venkateswaran (b. 1979)
Sankar Venkateswaran is a theatre director from Kerala, India. Venkateswaran studied directing at the School of Drama and Fine Arts, University of Calicut, after which he trained at the Theatre Training and Research Programme, Singapore. In 2007, he founded Theatre Roots & Wings, and directed Richard Murphet’s “Quick Death” (2007), “Sahyande Makan: The Elephant Project” (2008), Ohta Shogo’s “Water Station” (2011), “101 Lullabies” (2012),
and Henrik Ibsen’s “When We Dead Awaken” (2012) among others.
In 2013 he received the Ibsen Scholarship from Teater Ibsen, Norway, for ‘Tribal Ibsen Project’ which furthered his
work with the indigenous people in the mountain valley of Attappadi, Kerala. His following works, “Theriyama Nadanda Nera” (2016), “Udal Uravu” (2017), “Criminal Tribes Act” (2017), and “Indian Rope Trick” (2020) reflect the shift in Venkateswaran’s working context.
His works have been shown at various venues and festivals such as Zurich Theater Spektakel, Theaterfestival Spielart Munich, Kyoto Experiment, Zoukak Sidewalks in Beirut, and Theater Commons Tokyo. Alongside his work with the company, Venkateswaran directed a number of works outside, such as Anton Chekhov’s “Seagull” (2011), Maurice Maeterlinck’s “Interior” (2020) for Ninasam, Heggodu, Bhasa’s “Urubhangam” (2011) for Shinshu University, Matsumoto, “Tage der Dunkelheit” (2016) and “INDIKA” (2017) for Munich Volkstheater, and “When We Dead Awaken” (2018) for Intercultural Theatre Institute, Singapore. His latest work is titled “In My Time of Dying” (2022) with Theaterhaus Jena.
Venkateswaran served as the artistic director for the International Theatre Festival of Kerala in 2015 and 2016. During his term, the programme emphasized exchanges within the Global South.
He lives and works from Sahyande Theatre, a theatre-dwelling he built in Attappadi.

WRITER AND PERFORMER
Chandra Ninasam
Chandra Ninasam is a Bangalore-based theatre maker. He graduated from Ninasam TheatreInstitute, Karnataka, after which he received MA from Bangalore University. His appearances include Shogo Ohta’s “Water Station” (2016), solo performance “Udal Uravu" and “Indian Rope Trick” (2020). He has performed in various venues around the world
including Zurich, Munich, Beirut, Tokyo and Kyoto. He has also acted in a number of films, one of which “Mahasamparka” (dir. Santosh G.) received Best short film award at Bangalore International Short Film Festival in 2017.

WRITER AND PERFORMER
Anirudh Nair
Anirudh Nair is a theatre practitioner based in New Delhi. He is an alumnus of University of Exeter, UK, where he completed MA in Theatre Practice under the guidance of Prof. Phillip Zarrilli. In addition, his practice has been shaped by a few key collaborators who he has worked with over the last decade including British director Anna-Helena McLean of MOONFOOL and the ACTOR-CHORUS-TEXT (ACT) training, an international group of physical theatre artists, The Shakespeare Ensemble, a UK based Original Practices Shakespeare ensemble led by Ben Crystal, and Walkabout Theater, a Chicago-based physical theatre ensemble. Nair is the co-artistic director of Guild of the Goat, a theatre company based in New Delhi. The company’s work includes Lynda Radley’s "Futureproof", Danish
Sheikh’s “Contempt” (dir. Anirudh Nair) and “Sonnets c.2019” (dir. Anirudh Nair), a devised contemporary re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a site-specific, bilingual, promenade production set in a house in Delhi.