Soho Theatre today announces its Associate Partnership with India’s G5A Foundation to launch Writers’ Lab Mumbai, supported by the British Council.
Soho Theatre and the G5A Foundation’s paths first crossed in 2017 with the performances of Nastaha Marshall’s Half Breed in the G5A Black Box space in Soho Theatre’s India tour as part of the Arts Council and British Council Re:Imagine season. The production was accompanied by playwriting workshops from Half Breed director Miranda Cromwell and writer and performer Natasha Marshall. The India tour of Half Breed also stopped at the Jagriti Theatre in Bangalore, British Council Theatre in Chennai, British Council Theatre in New Delhi, with similar workshops taking place at each venue.
Soho Theatre’s connections to India run even further, with its 2013 production of Phil Porter’s Blink at the Jagriti Theatre in Bangalore, and the Ahir Shah and Lauren Pattinson comedy tour stopping at That Comedy Club in Bangalore, The Habitat in Mumbai, the Akshara Theatre in Dehli, the Bhaskara Auditorium in Hyderabad and the Institute Menezes Braganza Goa, as well as presenting comedian Shappi Khorsandi to the Mumbai Literary Festival in 2019. Soho Theatre has also brought some of the best Indian comics to the UK, whether in London, Edinburgh or on tour, including Vir Das, Aditi Mittal, Anuvab Pal, Kanan Gil, Radhika Vaz, Daniel Fernandes, Sumit Anand and Karunesh Talwar.
Building on the growing links between Soho Theatre and Indian writers, theatre-makers and comedians, Soho Theatre and G5A Foundation have forged an Associate Partnership for continued creative collaboration. Recently, during G5A’s fifth anniversary shouldart festival celebrations, Soho Theatre’s Creative Director David Luff and G5A Associate Artistic Director Ishan Benegal held an online public Zoom conversation about the relationship between the two theatres and their plans for the future.