JOIN USIn the hustle-bustle of day-to-day life, one tends to miss out on some brilliant performances that happen in the City.
Either one doesn’t have time for them or prefers to stay at home rather than get struck in the traffic. But there is one organisation which ensures that the love for performing arts never dies.
‘Sandbox Collective’ brings performing arts to one’s doorstep and have been staging acts in homes, gardens, and office spaces in an unconventional space.
“Our ‘Home Theatre Project’ takes intimate performances, like dance, music and theatre, to people’s homes. We create performances specifically for smaller spaces.
These are meant to be performed in drawing rooms, balconies or kitchens for smaller audiences. Besides homes, our shows arealso performed in offices,factories, terraces, gardens, galleries, studios, godowns and other alternative spaces,” says Nimi Ravindran, a member of ‘Sandbox Collective’.
They work towards discovering and sustaining new culturally vibrant spaces by building new audiences and facilitating multi-disciplinary collaborations between artistes.
‘Sandbox Collective’ was started by Nimi and Shiva, nine months ago. Both have worked for more than a decade as artistes and arts administrators.
‘Sandbox Collective’ is a formal extension of that work. There is also a new member in the ’Sandbox’ team — Raabiya Jayaram, who is manager of special projects. Raabiya is also a film-maker and has several years of experience in the field of performing arts.
“We not only create our own work but also work with other artistes. We curate, commission, create and tour performances; we also curate and organise theatre and arts festival. Our aim is to work with various artistes from across the country,” says Nimi.
On asking why the name ‘Sandbox Collective’, Shiva says, “It has a playfulness about it, something that reminds us to keep playing and not to take ourselves too
seriously.
The sandbox is also a space where children can fall endlessly and not be injured for life. You’re never scared to go back to the sandbox. We want to work like that, try various things, if we fall… we fall..
we’ll just have to get up, and like little children, try again.”
‘Sandbox Collective’ networks through their work. They have done 30 shows of ‘Koogu’, 20 of ‘Trivial Disasters’ and about eight shows of ‘Unveiling’.
“We have tried to manage to reach wider audience through our idea,’’ adds Nimi. Their major project was ‘The Great Galata’, which brought together the theatre community of Bangalore for two to three days to create short plays from start to finish. “We feel a great sense of community, like we all belong to one big family. It’s super fun,” says Nimi.
“The audience reaction has been fantastic. It’s only thanks to this response that we have been able to manage so much work in less than a year. We’ve built long-lasting partnerships. We also have a fantastic support system in the theatre and everyone is always ready to help everyone else,” says Nimi.