Creative Collaboration 2020: Technology and the Future of Theatre

One of India’s finest orators and storytellers, Roshan Abbas is an actor; TV & radio host; producer; event manager; creative director; film & theatre director; lyricist; CEO; angel investor; serial entrepreneur; author; and public speaking coach. Roshan founded and led Encompass (now Geometry Encompass) as Managing Director into becoming amongst India’s largest, most awarded experiential marketing agency. He was also an initial investor in and continues to be a mentor-partner at The Glitch. Both ventures have been acquired by WPP. Roshan has won seven national-level awards for TV and radio. In 2015, he co-founded Kommune – a performing arts collective for storytellers. He also helped conceptualise Spoken festival, bringing together performers from across the world for storytelling, poetry, spoken word, and song. Roshan continues to inspire by sharing his life lessons on communication and storytelling with entrepreneurs, corporates, artists, and anyone looking to discover a unique voice!

Sheena Khalid is a theatre director, writer, actor and drama facilitator based in Mumbai. She is a founding member of the theatre company - Patchworks Ensemble. She has trained in Physical Theatre at the London International School of Performing Arts. With Patchworks, she has co-directed and co-devised the shows “Ila” and “The Gentlemen’s Club AKA Tape”. Ila won the Laadli award in 2016 for Gender Sensitivity. Gentlemen’s Club AKA Tape is a unique cabaret style theatre performance about the lives of various drag-kings. Both Ila and The Gentlemen’s Club have travelled to various prestigious theatre festivals around the country. Her latest production “Shikaar” opened in August of 2019 and continues to play at venues around the city. As a freelance director and performer she has worked on numerous collaborations both within the country and internationally. She is a drama facilitator at the Drama School Mumbai where she teaches improvisation and devising. She has spent a lot of time exploring ideas of solo storytelling. She has developed modules which she takes into classrooms and offices around the country. She has conducted training workshops for Axis Bank, Piramal, Kotak Mahindra Bank, BNP Paribas, HUL, S P Jain School of Global Management and other independent workshops for non- actors and working professionals. These training workshops include group building, public speaking, gender sensitivity, creativity in the workspace and understanding body language. She also conducts personal one on one sessions for private clients on public speaking and presentation making. More recently she has developed a workshop series called “Captivate” which focuses on public speaking and confidence building skills for working women. Sheena is a story-teller with Kommune, where she also works part-time. At Kommune, she is part of the curatorial team of Spoken Fest (Indian’s largest storytelling, spoken word and poetry festival). She was one of five fellows (in the year 2016) for the “Tendulkar-Dubey Fellowship” for young theatre artist of outstanding talent. In the summer of 2017, she attended the “Lincoln Centre Directors Lab 2017” in New York (fully funded thanks to the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts). On a personal note, Sheena Khalid continues to deepen her exploration into performances and stories about and by women. She strives to create content that is relevant, engaging and humorous.