Kaivalya Plays

21/08/2026

Improv is not the icebreaker before the real training. It is the training.

“The Dutch expect you to have an opinion and to share it.” A participant said that to us at the Netherlands Embassy in New Delhi, and it has stayed with us since. Last week we were back for our fourth workshop with them, third in under a year. Ninety minutes, hard stop, a team of eight.

Ninety minutes to work on how a Dutch-Indian team gives feedback, decides things, and disagrees.
Every scene in improv runs on one instruction: make your partner look good. Your job is never your own line. It is the other person.

Which is counterintuitive, because the most effective way to handle your own fear on stage turns out to be taking responsibility for someone else’s. Harder still is trusting that they are doing the same for you, that while you are looking after them, they are looking after you. You cannot instruct that. You can only build a room where it keeps happening until people believe it.

Facilitated by Varoon P. Anand and Gaurav Singh Nijjer. Documented by Riddhijit Chattopadhyay. For the Netherlands Embassy in India.

18/08/2026

14/08/2026

The Google Cloud SMB Sales team did not need icebreakers.

Twenty-five people, a post-lunch slot at their Gurugram offsite, and a team that already knew each other well and had done a lot of team building together. Comfortable was already handled. Our job was to go past it.

So we started with something silly. A room of senior sales professionals standing up and saying “I am a tree,” then adding themselves to the picture one at a time: a bird, a branch, the sun.

Here’s why that isn’t a joke.

Teams rarely struggle to communicate because they lack vocabulary. They struggle because somewhere it became risky to say the thing. To disagree in the room. To admit you didn’t follow. To offer the half-formed idea that might be the good one. So people wait, and edit, and say the safe version.

Play dismantles that. When there’s no correct answer to get wrong, the fear of looking foolish drops away, and it doesn’t come back neatly when the topic turns serious. That’s the whole mechanism. Silliness lowers the cost of speaking, and then you spend that lowered cost on things that matter.

What we heard from the Google team afterwards was exactly that. People described finally saying things they’d been holding back. Others talked about finding a way to keep talking through disagreement instead of around it. Twenty-five colleagues who already got along, finding a register they didn’t have that morning.

“One of the most engaging sessions we have had.”

Thank you Abhinav, Shipra and the whole Google Cloud SMB Sales team for such an open, generous room. Facilitated by Varoon P. Anand and Gaurav Singh Nijjer.

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11/08/2026

Every landscape holds a story. What happens when we change the way we see it?

Join us for LANDSCAPES OF LA MANCHA AND PUNJAB, a multimedia storytelling workshop.

🗓️ Saturday, 29 August 2026
🕑 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
📍 Instituto Cervantes New Delhi (48 Hanuman Road, Connaught Place)

What connects the plains of La Mancha with the fields of Punjab?

A windmill on a ridge. A tube well at dusk. A road that promises more than it delivers. Both landscapes are flat, cultivated and full of stories.

In the second workshop of the Baba Quijote Singh project, participants will work hands-on with projection and visual metaphor, exploring how written material becomes projected image, and how an image can become a place an audience can step inside.

The sequences created during this workshop will become part of Baba Quijote Singh, an immersive multimedia experience in Punjabi and Spanish, and the final installation. No technical or previous experience is required.

Participants who wish to continue will have the opportunity to join the company developing and performing the production, premiering in December 2026.

Open to all. No previous experience required. Participation is free, but registration is essential as places are limited.

Register now at www.kaivalyaplays.org (or follow the link in our bio).

Presented by Kaivalya Plays, with support from Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and the Embassy of Spain in India, as part of Año Dual España–India 2026.

11/08/2026

What happens when the same thing appears differently to different people? Can two things be true at once?

Our workshop "Quijote Meets the Qissa" brought Don Quijote into conversation with the literary and philosophical traditions of Punjab.

This was the first public workshop offered as part of Baba Quijote Singh, an immersive multimedia experience being developed by Kaivalya Plays.

Led by Varoon P. Anand, the workshop explored Quijote’s famous windmill encounter, using improvisation and embodied exercises to unpack how a scene is built, and how the same object can hold radically different meanings depending on who is looking at it.

We also played with CROW (Character, Relationship, Objective and Where) as a tool for understanding scenes, and placed Don Quijote alongside Punjabi poetry and literature, including a deep dive into “Bulleya, Ki Jaana Main Kaun” by Bulleh Shah, asking what connects these traditions: questions of identity, existentialism, pride, honour, madness and the search for meaning.

Through movement, improvisation, discussion and play, we began asking the central question of Baba Quijote Singh: what happens when Quijote’s world is imagined through Punjab?

This is only the beginning. The ideas, stories and discoveries from this workshop will continue to shape the work as it develops towards its premiere in December.

NEXT WORKSHOP
🎨 Landscapes of La Mancha and Punjab
Saturday, 29 August 2026 | 2:00 PM–6:00 PM
📍 Instituto Cervantes New Delhi

Explore how Don Quijote can become an immersive visual world through projection, visual metaphors, multimedia storytelling and oral histories.

Register now at www.kaivalyaplays.org or follow the link in our bio.

Presented by Kaivalya Plays, with support from Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and the Embassy of Spain in India, as part of Año Dual España–India 2026

📷 Documentation by Riddhijit Chattopadhyay | Group photo by Akshayashree Ganesan

27/07/2026

Every story begins by asking, what if?

Join us for QUIJOTE MEETS THE QISSA, a creative writing workshop.

🗓️ Saturday, 8 August 2026
🕑2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
📍Instituto Cervantes New Delhi (48 Hanuman Road, Connaught Place)

What if Don Quijote had first been told in Punjab?

The wandering hero. The unreliable narrator. The story that grows with every retelling. The dreamer whose certainty the world mistakes for madness. Don Quijote and the qissa tradition of Punjab have more in common than four centuries and two continents might suggest.

In the first workshop of the Baba Quijote Singh project, participants will read, discuss and write together, exploring metafiction, satire, and the shifting line between madness and wisdom in Cervantes’ novel. Working collaboratively, we will reimagine an episode from Don Quijote as a contemporary Punjabi qissa, discovering how stories change when they travel across languages, cultures and landscapes.

The texts created during this workshop will become part of Baba Quijote Singh, an immersive multimedia experience in Punjabi and Spanish, and will also be published in the project’s accompanying multilingual chapbook. Participants who wish to continue will have the opportunity to join the company developing and performing the production, premiering in December 2026.

Open to all. No previous experience required. Participation is free, but registration is essential as places are limited.

Register now at www.kaivalyaplays.org (or follow the link in our bio).

Presented by Kaivalya Plays, with support from Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and the Embassy of Spain in India, as part of Año Dual España–India 2026

26/07/2026

Some stories are written before an audience. Others are written with one ✨

Kaivalya Plays, in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and the Embassy of Spain in India, invites writers, performers, artists and curious minds to take part in the making of BABA QUIJOTE SINGH, an immersive multimedia experience in Punjabi and Spanish premiering in December 2026.

Rather than being created behind closed doors, Baba Quijote Singh is being built with the public. Between August and October, four free workshops at Instituto Cervantes New Delhi will explore how a seventeenth-century Spanish novel becomes a contemporary Punjabi performance.

Together, they trace the journey from page to stage... through writing, multimedia, performance and design.

Saturday 8 August
📝 Quijote Meets the Qissa, a creative writing workshop.

Saturday 29 August
🖼️ Landscapes of La Mancha and Punjab, a multimedia storytelling workshop.

Saturday 19 September
👤Becoming Baba Quijote, a theatrical performance workshop.

Saturday 10 October
🔥Quijote Takes the Stage, a design and presentation workshop

Each workshop runs from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM and can be attended independently. Together, they shape the stories, images, voices and performances that will become the final production and its accompanying multilingual chapbook. Participants who wish to continue will also have the opportunity to join the company developing and performing the work in December.

Open to all. No previous experience required. Participation is free, but registration is essential as places are limited.

🎫 Registrations for the first workshop are now open at www.kaivalyaplays.org or follow the link in our bio.

Presented by Kaivalya Plays, with support from Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and the Embassy of Spain in India, as part of Año Dual España–India 2026.

24/07/2026

Somewhere between La Mancha and Punjab, a familiar traveller begins his journey again.

This December we invite you to join us for BABA QUIJOTE SINGH, an immersive multimedia experience in Punjabi and Spanish.

The immersive installation and performance premieres in December 2026 at Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and runs through January 2027.

In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes sent an ageing gentleman out of his village in La Mancha, armed with a rusted lance and a head full of chivalric romances, convinced he could set the world right. Four centuries later, that same figure rides out of a village in Punjab. He is an old farmer. He has read too much, and believed every word. Beside him rides a companion who knows better (and follows anyway.)

Baba Quijote Singh places Cervantes in conversation with the qissa, the great narrative poetry of Punjab. Across both traditions, wandering heroes, impossible journeys and stories that reshape reality occupy the same imaginative landscape. The production asks what happens when Don Quijote is retold through Punjabi language, music and folklore, allowing these two literary worlds to meet on equal terms.

Rather than being created behind closed doors, Baba Quijote Singh is being built with the public. Between August and October, Kaivalya Plays will host four free creative workshops at Instituto Cervantes New Delhi exploring writing, projection and multimedia, performance, and staging. The stories, images, voices and performances developed during these workshops will become part of the final production and an accompanying multilingual chapbook. Participants who wish to continue will also have the opportunity to join the company and help bring the work to life.

Registration for the first workshop is now open at www.kaivalyaplays.org (or follow the link in our bio).

Presented by Kaivalya Plays and supported by Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and the Embassy of Spain in India, as part of Año Dual España–India 2026.