Jul 4, 20203 min read

Oddbird Theatre on Vision, Visibility, and Viability of Theatre Spaces

As part of the Theatre Management Fellowship by Kaivalya Plays, we invited theatre practitioners, arts managers and guest speakers from cultural institutions to speak to our Fellows about a wide variety of topics.

We had a fantastic session on ‘Spaces for Theatre: Vision, Visibility & Viability’ with Shambhavi Singh and Parul Sood from the team at Oddbird Theatre Foundation to give our Fellows a glimpse into the day-to-day runnings of a vibrant performing arts centre as well as a perspective on the long-term strategy and vision for sustaining it.

Oddbird Theatre & Foundation has been a pioneer in creating a safe and open space for artists and audiences alike for the better part of the last decade. Some of our major takeaways from their session are:

💡Resource Management

There is no ideal one-stop expert solution to anything - be it building spaces, communities or finances. You have to tap into different resources simultaneously.

📑 Process-Driven

Attention to detail, getting your hands dirty and making mistakes will take you a long way. A super exhaustive event checklist is proof and example.

🐢 Community Building

Building communities is a slow organic process - informed largely by personal sensibilities and politics of the team involved. The medium does not matter as much as intention.

Thank you so much Shambhavi and Parul! Hope to have you back for more sessions soon!

About Oddbird Theatre & Foundation

Oddbird Theatre & Foundation is a performing arts centre based in New Delhi, India. It was started in July 2016 to help increase public engagement with the performing arts. Founded by Akhil Wable and Shambhavi Singh, Oddbird quickly grew to become a vibrant community for artists across disciplines to create, cultivate and share their art with a tight-knit intimate community of audiences and patrons. It aims to make performing arts an accessible and interesting activity for audiences from diverse backgrounds. Since July 2019, the Oddbird Theatre & Foundation was a partner of Headspace, an improv for mental wellness series by Kaivalya Plays, serving as both the physical and the online home for various initiatives under the project. Learn more about their upcoming programs on their website.

About The Theatre Management Fellowship

The Theatre Management Fellowship by Kaivalya Plays is a first-of-its-kind training initiative focused on strategic management and creative administration in the field of theatre. In July 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown, the first cohort of the Fellowship was conducted completely online. The Theatre Management Fellowship received more than 90 applications, out of which 5 candidates from 5 different cities were selected. Over 12 weeks the 5 Fellows were trained in marketing, grant writing, fund-raising, archiving and worked from start to finish on four digital productions and several applied improvisation workshops. Over 72 days of the Fellowship, the group created over 100 documents and resources, held fifteen sessions focused solely on technology for theatre (including creating trackers, youtube channels, email campaign tools, using WIX to design your own website), invited thirteen speakers to speak on topics including curation, financial management and planning, legal resources and applied work for corporate clients. The speakers included Amitesh Grover, Yuki Ellias, Atul Kumar, Atul Satya Koushik, Vivek Rao from QTP, Shiva Pathak and Nimi Ravindran from the Sandbox Collective, and Menaka Rodriguez and Spandana Bhowmick from the India Foundation for the Arts.