James Joyce: Immersive

Aishwarya Jha is an award-winning author, designer & entrepreneur from New Delhi. Her debut novel, The Scent of Fallen Stars, was published in India by Penguin Random House, earning her the prestigious Ram Nath Goenka Sahithya Samman for Fiction 2024. A mentee of the Asian Women Writers programme, her work has previously appeared in several international literary journals and an anthology at Oxford University. She has been or is scheduled to be a speaker at multiple high profile events, including the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Alliance Literary Festival, The Write Circle with the Prabha Khaitan Foundation, and FICCI Flo Fest. Apart from writing, Aishwarya works on select interior design projects and develops unique cultural experiences at Indophile, which she co-founded.

Kriti Pant is an actor, trainer and voice-over artist based in New Delhi, India. She has performed nationally and internationally, working across different styles, media and communities. She is also a founding member of The Tadpole Repertory, one of Delhi's most prominent theatre groups. She helps run the company's Looking Glass Project, a workshop program which encourages people across all ages to actively engage with and invest in the arts. She has a particular interest in working with young people and is currently devising a new performance for young audiences.

Anirban Ghosh (Baan G) is a New Delhi-based interdisciplinary artist with over two decades of experience in music, sound design, composition, and production. He has studied bass guitar under legendary bass players Gary Willis and Karl Peters and is currently studying experimental music with Michael Harrison. He has contributed to critically acclaimed projects in film, documentaries, live shows, and interactive media, and has performed and recorded worldwide with renowned artists and musicians. BAAN G is also the founder of Dastaan Live, a political art rock performance project. He teaches a course on sound design and creative music exploration at Ashoka University, is the co-founder of a curatorial collective W.I.P LABS, and is the Managing Trustee of Aagaaz Theatre Trust, an arts-based non-profit in New Delhi.

Riddhijit is a Producer, Director, Actor, Documentary Filmmaker and Voice-over Artist. He is presently working with Banyan Infomedia as an Assistant Producer (2021 -). As a theatre artist, he has been associated with Jana Natya Manch since 2021. Theatre has been a part of his life since he was 10-11 years old. Riddhijit is also an amateur filmmaker. Last year, he made a documentary about the 2022 Shadipur Natak Utsav and about how kids play an important role in carrying theatre forward. Other than that he has worked as an Assistant Director and Filmmaker for various short films.

Gaurav Singh Nijjer (1994, New Delhi) is a theatre-maker, creative technologist and designer from New Delhi, India whose artistic works explore technology and media in live performance. He brings together his experience in design, digital cultures and data to explore new ways of engaging audiences, in the theatre, at home and elsewhere. He is one-half of the Delhi-based theatre collective Kaivalya Plays and works as a freelance artist with artist collectives in India, United Kingdom and Europe. He recently completed the German Chancellor Fellowship where he conducted a 12-month arts research project on digital theatre and hybrid performances with the Berlin-based Rimini Protokoll. Gaurav studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London as a Chevening Scholar. His recent artistic works include ABSURDO (2023), Mining Hate (2023), Climateprov (2023), Trust Me, It’s a Forward (2023) The Amazing Flabby Breasted Virgin & Other Sordid Tales (2022) and Lifeline 99 99 (2021). As a creative technologist, his work often brings live audio, coding, live camera and video, digital platforms, APIs, automations and other digital technologies and tools onto the stage. He has previously received the Parivartan Artistic Research grant for AI in Indian Theatre, the AI to Amplify Fellowship by Goethe Institut, the Stage Jame #4 grant by Schaubude Berlin, the Befantastic AI Arts Fellowship, C3: Creativity, Codes and Community and other grants to support his work in technology in theatre. As an arts manager, Gaurav is the General Manager at Kaivalya Plays, an Indian performing arts organization known for their work in applied improvisation and adaptation of foreign-language texts. Here, Gaurav co-created the Theatre Management Fellowship, a unique training initiative that focuses on the strategic management and creative administration of theatre. Under Kaivalya Plays, Gaurav also directed Lifeline 99 99 (2021) and Luz Negra (2020), devised Aguebao (2019) and performed in Unravel (2018). He is also the Communications & Community Manager at The Nursery Theatre, a London-based improvisational theatre company with students, performers and audiences spread out across the world. He also reviews theatre and art experiences for the UK-based platform North West End UK. As an actor and director, Gaurav is a performer and founding member of The Living Room Collective and El Clavileno, the latter being India’s only Spanish language theatre group. He previously worked at one of the oldest and most prominent cultural institutions in Delhi, the Little Theatre Group (LTG) Auditorium as a consultant, overseeing their marketing operations and curating programs for their new black box studio, The Blank Canvas. His acting credits include Yasmine Reza’s Art, Manav Kaul’s Peele Scooter Waala Aadmi, Kristo Sagor’s Threesome Without Simone and Jorge Luis Borges’ Funes The Memorious, among other work in Hindi, English, and Spanish. He has previously directed plays like Alvaro Leal’s Luz Negra, Badal Sircar’s Juloos and Footnotes, inspired by Yasmine Reza’s Art. He has performed at festivals like ReConnect (2020), Old World Theatre Festival (2019), AlmagroOFF Classical Theatre Festival (2019), Thespo (2017) and has received recognition at numerous educational institutions with the collegiate theatre society Fourth Wall Productions. As a freelance marketer, Gaurav has worked with brands like Atlan, SocialCops, Josh Talks, Parallel, FreshMenu, among others, in various capacities and occasionally offers marketing, digital and creative consulting services. He has an undergraduate degree in Management Studies from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies (SSCBS), University of Delhi with a specialization in marketing (Class of 2016).

Varoon P. Anand is the Artistic Director of Kaivalya Plays and a facilitator specializing in applied improvisation. His multi-disciplinary training includes improv training from Danielle Scott, Shawn Kinley, Elana Fishbein and Lacy Alana; clowning from Ashwath Bhatt, Gardzienice physical theatre techniques under Anna Helena McLean, mentorship in Classical Theatre by Ignacio García, and Forum theatre training from React UK. Additionally, Varoon teaches Stella Adler's Method acting, Rudolf Laban's Eight Efforts, and Rasa Theory from Natyashastra, among others. Varoon began his career in 2006 at the renowned Theatre Guild of Ancón in Panama. He has won Best Actor at the Short+Sweet Festival, as well as Best Director and Best Writer at the 48 Hour Film Festival Delhi. He has received over 20 commissions from the Embassy of Spain, Argentina, Ecuador, the Danish Cultural Institute, the Instituto Cervantes and Goethe Insitut to create work for Indian audiences. In 2018, he received the Refunction grant from Goethe-Institut to create Unravel, an improvised mental health piece performed in India and UK. In 2019, he was the first Indian to showcase at the Almagro Classical Theatre Festival in Spain with Marta la piadosa, and received the Gender Bender grant for Aguebao exploring gender and data. Additionally, Varoon has received grants the Connections Through Culture India Wales (2021), IFA Research on performer safety (2022), Moleskine Creativity Pioneers Fund and EU Mediafutures Artists for Media grant for Mining Hate (2023), among others. He continues to explore new ways to present and teach the techniques of improv, along with his other specialties.​