Alkazi Theatre Archives

Alkazi Theatre Archives Collection and research of post Independence modern Indian print and audio visual records and ephemera considering theatre a social document

THE THEATRE PHOTOGRAPH AS EVIDENCEwithA. Mangai (theatre maker), Amal Allana (theatre maker) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (...
28/03/2026

THE THEATRE PHOTOGRAPH AS EVIDENCE
with
A. Mangai (theatre maker), Amal Allana (theatre maker) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (artist)

Saturday, March 28th 2026 at 6 PM
(Tea and refreshments at 5.30 PM)

šŸ“Lecture Room II, IIC Annexe, New Delhi

THE THEATRE PHOTOGRAPH AS EVIDENCESaturday, March 28th 2026 at 6 PMTheatre and photography hold representation, authenti...
23/03/2026

THE THEATRE PHOTOGRAPH AS EVIDENCE
Saturday, March 28th 2026 at 6 PM

Theatre and photography hold representation, authenticity and liveness as important points of reference. Both have narrative strategies, which hold in common the tension between speculation and imagination as well as truth finding and reality making - what is ā€˜realityā€™ and how is it represented? As dynamic source material, deflecting and reflecting both evidentiary and lyrical dimensions of the subject, event and landscape in view, what kind of evidence does the theatre photograph offer?

A. Mangai (theatre maker), Amal Allana (theatre maker) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (artist) consider how the entanglement of performance and photography allow us to negotiate the dynamics of seeing, looking, and being watched; of memory, of the tension in lived and imagined spaces ā€“ of inner and outer lives ā€“ of the intermixing of subjective and objective claims to realities.

šŸ“Lecture Hall II, IIC Annexe, New Delhi

UPDATED SCHEDULE AND VENUE:Of the Body Public: Through a Performance ArchiveDate: 13th FebVenue: The Stage, Cochin Club ...
12/02/2026

UPDATED SCHEDULE AND VENUE:
Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive
Date: 13th Feb
Venue: The Stage, Cochin Club

See you all there!

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance ArchiveĀ Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Ko...
10/02/2026

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance ArchiveĀ 
Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Five Voices
Phantom Publics
13th February
11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Speakers
Mila T. Samdub, Curator, Writer and Designer
Shaina Anand, Artist and Filmmaker
Akshay Madan, Artist and Technologist
Kaldi Moss, Interdisciplinary Artist
Ashok Sukumaran, Artist and Co-founder, CAMP

ModeratorĀ 
Mila T. Samdub
Curator, Writer and Designer

A government building burns in the background. In the foreground, a young man dances. The frames one tends to encounter on TikTok and other social media that allow for the production and dissemination of short-form content are usually filmed vertically, in which ordinary divisions of space - background and foreground, the center and its margins, collapse to concentrate, magnify, and distribute a cluster of associations amongst an invisible mass of bodies. Digital media, across its myriad and rapidly shifting configurations, generate and shape social movements and populist collectives. They animate bodies and connect technical and natural environments, posing pressing questions for techno-social milieus worldwide. How do public formations mediated by digital and virtual infrastructures create new epistemologies of spectatorship? How do bodies define, form, and perform themselves for and within these ghost worlds?

All are welcome.Ā 
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.Ā 
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

KeynoteTheatre as Assembly: Spheres of Radical Imagination and Pragmatic Utopias13th February10:00 am - 11:00 amVenue: P...
09/02/2026

Keynote
Theatre as Assembly: Spheres of Radical Imagination and Pragmatic Utopias
13th February
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Speaker
Florian Malzacher, Curator, Dramaturg, Writer and Professor of Dramaturgy and Curatorial Practice, Karlsruhe University of Arts

The renewed interest in theatre as public sphere as well as in its political potential in the past one and a half decade has also put a fresh focus on the unique possibilities of theatre creating temporary communities sharing defined time and space: not only to mirror society but also to try out social and political procedures, in which societies in their different variations can be thought, played, performed, enacted, tested or even invented. An assembly ā€“ in the way many activist groups use the term ā€“ is a place of gathering, of building a community, and of experimenting with different procedures of democracy. While this is quite close to the attempts of theatre as a public sphere there seems to be an essential difference: the activist assembly is generally considered to be a space of authenticity. The power of theatrical assemblies on the other hand lies in creating a situation that is real and not real, actual and symbolic at the same time. Political developments in recent years have raised the question of whether this discourse still describes the times in which we live. The concept of assembly has come under severe pressure for a variety of reasons and from a variety of quarters. The pandemic and the increase in state violence in many parts of the world have highlighted the fragility of analogue assemblies. But in another, very fundamental way, the idea of deliberative assemblies has also become caught between the fronts of the recent struggles for cultural hegemony: which opinions do we allow, and which do we deny space?

All are welcome.
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Ko...
09/02/2026

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive
Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Closing Keynote
12th February
5:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Speakers
Nikhil Chopra, Artist and Curator; Curator, 6th edition of Kochi Muziris Biennale; Founder, HH Art Spaces.
Sarover Zaidi, Cultural Theorist and Academic

To ask ā€œwhat is performance practiceā€ is to set into motion a whole host of questions. What is it? Where and how does it occur? Where does it settle, and what can marking those coordinates tell us about who it ultimately designates as its interlocutors?

In the shared affective moment of a performance, artistic or political, which always has the potential to provoke and galvanise, is this provisional body a group of spectators? Are they witnesses? Are these formations collectives, publics, or counterpublics? What does it mean not just to watch but also to take action? And what does doing/acting entail?

Convened by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive brings together artists, scholars, and thinkers to critically reflect on the reciprocal entanglements of performance practice and its myriad publics, both through and beyond Khojā€™s extensive performance archive.

This research symposium anticipates an exhibition of/from Khojā€™s extensive performance archive in early 2027.

All are welcome.Ā 
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.Ā 
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Ko...
06/02/2026

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive
Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Three Voices
Masses and Crowds, Communities and Movements
12th February
4:15 pm - 5:15 pm

Speakers
Dr. Brahma Prakash, Cultural Theorist, Essayist and Assistant Professor, School of Arts and
Aesthetics, JNU
Dr. Samina Luthfa, Cultural Activist and Professor of Sociology, University of Dhaka

Moderator
Dr. Trina Nileena Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta

A figure alights a platform that has appeared in the middle of a busy street in Delhi. Swarms of people begin to surround this platform, its view obstructed to passersby and onlookers by a profusion of banners and placards. The ambient racket of movement and commerce that sonically defines this part of time recedes as their voices swell. Eventually, hard-faced men and women in khaki uniforms are spotted at the gatheringsā€™ fringes, and yellow barricades indicate points of entry and exit. While the artistic performance constructs strangers into a collective by creating a shared affective moment, staged performances of politics also craft a public out of the amorphous crowd. Set within and against charged dramaturgies and scenographies, what Trotsky called ā€œthe inspired frenzy of historyā€, these performances are meant to provoke new ways of being in the world, in which conventional demarcations amongst participants can collapse to form a protean body politic. How are rights and demands enacted by and amongst the actors of political performance, within and beyond its enclosures? How do contestations of ideology, forging of solidarities, and reconfigurations of civic spaces mediate the complex interactions between desire, humiliation, and liberation that delineate a differentiated public?

All are welcome.
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Ko...
05/02/2026

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive
Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Four Voices
Passersby
12th February
2:45 pm - 4:15 pm

Speakers
Venuri Perera, Performance Artist and Choreographer
Dr. Gargi Bharadwaj, Theatre Practitioner and Performance Studies Scholar
Sonia Khurana, Conceptual Multi-media Artist

Moderator
Zuleikha Chaudhari, Theatre Director. Director, Alkazi Theatre Archives

A photograph is taken from the terrace of a distinctly white building in New Delhiā€™s Khirki Extension. It depicts a procession that has clogged the arterial road on which Khoj lives. At the center of the throng, a figure sits in a chariot. Against a wall, watching the scene unfold, is a group of onlookers. Some look bemused, some watch solemnly, others appear disinterested. One face smiles at the camera. How can scenographic aesthetics be brought to bear on public spaces? How do these sites indicate points of perspective, frames of vision, and vantage points to look from? In what way do events/actions create a complex, inseparable affiliation between the site and the intervention? ā€œOnlookerā€ and ā€œpasserbyā€ are terms used to describe individuals who witness events, such as accidents, crimes, or performances, without being directly involved. Witnessing focuses on subjectivity and partiality and the entwinement of the fictional and the actual where looking is not a detached visual activity but a sensorial experience manifesting the onlookersā€™ own realities, fluctuating concepts of self, and ways of doing and being. If witnessing is always partial, is it possible to determine what truly happened from within the contradictions in different perspectives not only between a state and its citizens, but between different communities, between different groups and even between individual testimonies?

All are welcome.
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Ko...
04/02/2026

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive
Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Four Voices
Khoj: Publics and Counterpublics
12th February
12:15 pm - 13:145 pm

Speakers
Latika Gupta, Art Historian and Curator
Swati Janu, Artist and Architect
Aastha Chauhan, Artist and Curator

Moderator
Dr. Brahma Prakash
Cultural Theorist, Essayist and Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU

A male artist shaves his beard and dons a costume in a room full of people. He puts on a Victorian suit, and affecting the eraā€™s manners, perambulates out of the Khoj building and into the busy streets of Khirki Extension. His walk takes him to Khirki Masjid, then to Satpula, a dam that sits east of the masjid, before he marches towards and into a sprawl of malls across the street. The site of the performance is in flux, moving from one enclosure to the next, through the complexities of their densely populated interstices. Institutions and their complex interactions with urban and social infrastructures classify and assume public affective terrains. How does performance, as it is staged and performed within a pre-decided logic of site-specificity, adapt to the exigencies and conditions of those sites? Does site-specific work always evince larger private and public structures predicated upon logics of inclusion and exclusion?

All are welcome.
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Image 1: Untitled, Song D**g. International Workshop, Modinagar (1999). Image courtesy: Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association

Image 2: Khirkee Talk Show: Khirkee Khol, Khul Ke Bol, Swati Janu (2017).

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Ko...
03/02/2026

Of the Body Public: Through a Performance Archive
Dates: 12 & 13 February 2026
Venue: Pavilion, Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi

Three Voices
Collectives
12th February
11 am - 12 pm

Moderator
Dr. Gargi Bharadwaj
Theatre Practitioner and Performance Studies Scholar

Speakers
Dr. Trina Nileena Banerjee
Assistant Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta
Mario Dā€™Souza, Curator and Writer

A performance protests a law that regulates intimacies between people by staging publicly what is thought to be, and forced to be, a private act. The audience that sits and watches is drawn into its protest, invited to participate in its transgressions. In pursuing its traces within the archive that carries them, one encounters an inventory of images. Eyes peer out from their darkened edges, peripheral bodies, as if incidental to the occasion for gathering. Performance binds bodies together into a collective, establishing a shared sense of time and space. Working against a paucity of archival material that centers those who gather to watch, this panel explores the political potentialities that emerge at a performanceā€™s margins. Can performance open spheres in which contradictions are rendered visible, available to be shaped and articulated, and where political and ideological alternatives can be collectively imagined, tried out, discussed, and confronted? How can we examine the collective affective and embodied experience of artistic performance from its margins?

All are welcome.
Registrations and schedule details are on our website and Instagram page.
Registration link in bio.

Conceived by Alkazi Theatre Archives and Khoj International Artistsā€™ Association, and co-presented by Kochi Muziris Biennale. Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Image 1: Sabitri Heisnam in Draupadi, Heisnam Kanhailal. From the Kalakshetra Manipur Archives.

Image 2: Broken Palmyra, Godwin Constantine, 1999.

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