Talk show with Mr. Ajeet Singh Palawat, Theatre & Bollywood Actor, Mumbai, on the topic ‘Possibilities in Theatre’

Objective of the Talk : We see less people around us who are aspiring to become writer, artist as they fear how will they sustain in such fields? This particular session was designed to answer these questions.

Overall Report of the activity : IISU Theatrical Society, COSD Theatre studies, ICG-IISU Alumnae Association - Bandhan and Rotary Club Jaipur- Gurukul are organising 4 days talk series on Theatre. This talk session was the second session of this series started with the welcome note by Ms. Aditi Khandelwal and further moderated by Ms Chelcy Pathak, Alumni of IISU. She introduced Mr.Ajeet Singh Palawat, He completed his bachelor’s in Pol.Science (Hons.) from Rajasthan University in the year 2007. He graduated from National School of Drama in 2010 with specialization in acting. He has been in N.S.D Repertory Company for four years & has worked with Directors like K.N.Panikkar, Robin Das, Anuradha Kapur, Kirti jain, Ranjeet Kapur, Gunakar dev Goswami, Mohit Takalkar, Roysten Abel, Dennis Mellifer, Adil Hussain & Many others. He is recognised for his work in "Virasat","Mukaam Dehru, Jila Nagaur","Mai hun Yusuf aur ye hai mera bhaai ", "Makardhwajan"(malyalam ), "Mausambi-Narangi", "Gajab Kahani".

He has acted in more than 35 plays and has directed "Kasumal-Sapno ", an adaptation of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream " in Rajasthani. The play has won accolades throughout the country. Presently he is working as a freelancer and is running his theatre group, Ujaagar Dramatic Association in Jaipur. He has been awarded META best actor critic citation and Tendulkar Dubey fellowship.  Appeared in films like The Bright day, Poster Boys,Lukka-chupi, Criminal justice-2 , Boygiri(web series).  After the introduction, Ms. Chelcy asked him about his journey and He shared his major steps of journey with students. Born and Raised in a conservative Marwari family, Mr. Singh had to face a lot of hardships in order to continue theatre as his full time career but He didn’t give up and found his way. Mr. Singh said,” Doctor gives his life’s 5 years for his training and same goes with the actor, one needs formal training to become an actor.” He said Theatre has so many possibilities, as an actor, as a set designer, as a costume designer, as stage manager, as a light designer. If anyone wants to make a career in theatre all they need is to start doing theatre from college, in local groups of their city and then try to approach good theatre companies when one is experienced and work with them, other than that there are so many organisations who give grants to researchers and performers to create their work. He shared memories of his college theatre days and students could connect with him. His major focus was on Theatre training, He said this art form is nit that easy, one needs to tune their body and mind. At the end there were a Q&A session in which students asked their questions to Mr.Ajeet and He replied each one of them gracefully.

Outcome -  Theatre is not a hobby or an extra co curricular activity, It has a lot of possibilities to shape a person not only for theatre but also for other fields. Theatre improves ways of seeing things around us, observation and articulation. Mr. Ajeet said that it’s good that Students are getting formal training at IISU.