May 25 2025 to May 25 2025 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Language: English, Tamil & Hindi

Durga and Lakshmi, two artists – one a human, the other a sentient stereo player set out for a performance of fears – to rant her truth and perform the dare. Durga asks herself what epitomizes ‘a woman’, finally landing on the idea of a ‘Garam Roti’- the humble Indian flatbread.

What starts as a personal reflection on the matter, culminates into an exercise of communal listening to rants (recordings) of women from across India. The play moves through borders of fiction into the non-fiction realm with the ‘Garam Roti Library’- an audio collection of women sharing their anecdotes, thoughts on tradition, labour and revolution.

Credits:
Produced by Playhouse Productions
Writer, Director, Performer: Durga Venkatesan
Executive Producer: Sukrit Mahajan
Production: Meghna Manglani, Nikhil Bansal & Varad Salvekar
Sound: Nikhil Bansal
Projection: Sukrit Mahajan
Lights Design: Surya Saathi
Sound Design & Edit: Pause.Dxa, Nikhil Bansal
Sound Dubbing: Rohan Kanwar
Voice of Lakshmi: Durga Venkatesan
Set & Publicity Design: Devika Saxena
Welcome Kit Design: Rama Shivakumar
Artistic Consultation: Mohammed Ellyas Lehry
The project was developed at Rangamadu in collaboration with Namkampani.

The Garam Roti Library has been developed with recordings of women from across India. The project extends gratitude to the women who contributed their voices to the library. The current recordings have been carried out by Durga Venkatesan, Meghna Manglani, Nikhil Bansal & Saran Vashisht.

The stereo played is a contribution by Anusha Mehra & family.

The album covers have been designed using Midjourney (AI platform) Courtesy – Havish

Artistes

Durga Venkatesan
Writer, Director & Performer
Durga Venkatesan is a Bengaluru/Mumbai based performer, director, and creative producer and co-founder experimenting at theatres. Born in Chennai (Tamil Nadu), she graduated from Lady Shri Ram College for Women (Delhi University). She began her journey with street theatre and founded Project Kancha, a community theatre initiative.

In 2017, she participated in the ‘Youth Exchange Programme to China’. Over the past decade, she has performed and produced shows at prestigious festivals like Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, Windermere Theatre Festival, and Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival.

Since 2024, she has been performing her solo pieces Touchy Topic and Garam Roti, selected for Jairangam Fringe Festival (Bengaluru) and Thespo 2024 respectively. She is the recipient of Pearl Padamsee Award for Outstanding Performer (Thespo 2024) and New Outstanding Writing Award (Thespo 2024). She was recently invited to perform at the 100th Marathi Natya Mahotsav Theatre Festival held in Mumbai. She now looks forward to bringing her experiences and training to Playhouse Productions.

Sukrit Mahajan
Executive Producer
Hailing from the Capital, Sukrit Mahajan is a theatre practitioner and a camera actor, currently based in Mumbai. Formerly a production engineering and research analyst, Sukrit shifted gears and turned to the arts post the pandemic and underwent a yearlong training in Theatre Making from Drama School Mumbai (DSM), after which he shifted base to Mumbai.

With over 8 years of experience spanning Direction to Production and Acting to Lighting, Sukrit has integrally worked in 25+ theatre plays and has travelled the country with his shows. Most recently, Sukrit directed a rehearsed reading of M-Butterfly by David Henry Hwang for Bhasha Center’s ‘Hear, Here’ programme. He has also closely worked as an actor with Sunit Tandon, Maneesh Verma, Akhshay Gandhi and many more.

In 2024, Sukrit began his theatre company – Playhouse Productions, which also currently runs Garam Roti, for which he acts as the Executive Producer.

Meghna Manglani
Production
Meghna Manglani is a Mumbai based actor-theatre maker. She has completed her graduation in Liberal Arts with a specialization in psychology from NMIMS University, where she was first introduced to theatre and filmmaking. She has done several short films in various different capacities like acting, direction and cinematography during her college days which were a part of different festivals. Feeding her curiosity in performing arts, she decided to pursue a PG course in Acting and Theatre making from Drama School Mumbai.

Meghna is also a movement enthusiast and finds meaning in the act of creation. She believes that art holds the potential to initiate important conversations and aspires to do the same through her body of work. She wishes to explore herself and the world around her through the medium of art and develop her career in theatre and screen.

Nikhil Bansal
Production
Nikhil Bansal is a dedicated theatre practitioner whose journey began during his bachelor’s degree studies at Delhi University. This early passion led him to pursue a Master’s in Dramatic Arts at the prestigious Tagore National School of Drama (batch of 2021-2023). Currently, Nikhil holds the position of theatre practitioner at Carmel Convent School while also engaging in freelance theatre projects with the tribal Gond community. Identifying as a ‘dedicated practitioner of applied theatre,’ Nikhil’s professional focus centers on leveraging dramaturgical tools and performance techniques to foster development and dialogue across diverse institutional settings.

Varad Salvekar
Production
Varad has been a theatre artist for over 10 years. He played ‘sadashiv’ in Nipun Dharmadhikari’s Mee Vasantrao. He has been a part of Anandowari (directed by Gerish Khemani), Mahanirwan (directed by Satish Alekar) and Panchatantra (Trimala and Piazza).