Zuleikha Chaudhari is a theatre director and lighting designer based in New Delhi and

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

, India. She is also a Visiting Faculty (Scene Work) at The Dramatic Art and Design Academy, New Delhi. She was awarded the

Sangeet Natak Academy Sangeet Natak Akademi (The National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama in English) is the national level academy for performing arts set up by the Government of India. History It was set up by the Indian education ministry on 31 May 1952 and be ...

, YUVA PURUSKAR in 2007 and Charles Wallace India Trust Award, 2001/2002.

Education and early life

Chaudhari majored in Theatre Directing and Light Design from Bennington College in

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

, USA in 1995. She is the granddaughter of

Ebrahim Alkazi Ebrahim Alkazi (18 October 1925 – 4 August 2020) was an Indian theatre director and drama teacher. A rigid disciplinarian, he instilled in his acting students an awe and reverence that they still carry with them, with several of them havin ...

, eminent Indian theatre director and daughter of

Amal Allana Amal Allana (born 14 September 1947) is an Indian theatre director, scenic designer and costume designer and presently she is in her second consecutive term as the Chairperson of National School of Drama, India's premier institute of Theatre tra ...

, theatre director and former Chairperson of

National School of Drama National School of Drama (NSD) is a theatre training institute situated at New Delhi, India. It is an autonomous organization under Ministry of Culture, Government of India. It was set up in 1959 by the Sangeet Natak Akademi and became an indepe ...

, New Delhi. She notes about her prominent lineage, "Contrary to popular belief I did not grow up with rehearsals all around me. As children, we never watched that much theatre. Maybe, because we didn't show that much interest. I arrived at it on my own."

Work

Her experiments with space and narrative widely informs her works. Her work investigates the nature of performance in itself and explores the relationship between the text and the performer, between the performer and space, and the role of the spectator in the performative experience. She describes her works as "an exploration of space and the role that space plays in the construction and experience of narratives – whether it is the space of the human body, or the space of the place within which the performance is happening." Her first major theatre production was '

Roland Schimmelpfennig Roland Schimmelpfennig (born 19 September 1967) is a German theatre director and playwright. His plays are performed in more than 40 countries. Biography Schimmelpfennig was born in Gottingen. He began his career as a journalist in Istanbul, b ...

's Arabian Night', an experimental site-specific installation and performance supported by Max Mueller Bhavan in association with Khoj International Artists' Association. The production opened in Khoj Studios, New Delhi, in 2006 and was presented again in Seoul Performing Arts Festival,

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

, 2007.

She continued this style of site-specific installation and performance art with her next project, 'On Seeing', based on

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his ...

's short story, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, presented in 2008 at Khoj Studios, New Delhi and different theatre festivals and at Essl Museum, Vienna in 2010. Set in three rooms at Khoj Studios, New Delhi, this performance required the audience to move with the actors. Chaudhuri explains about this unique performance, "When the performance and audience move – the text gets fragmented. I wanted to explore that connection." Chaudhuri's project 'Some Stage Directions for Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman' based on Norwegian playwright

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...

's penultimate play,

John Gabriel Borkman ''John Gabriel Borkman'' is a 1896 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was his penultimate work. Plot The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to s ...

with texts by the Raqs Media Collective was commissioned for the Delhi Ibsen Festival, 2009. Chaudhuri's later work consisted of installations developed from her stage productions. Her next project, 'Propositions: On text and Space', a take-off from her earlier stage production, 'Some Stage Directions for Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman', developed in collaboration with Khoj Studios' Artist Residency programme in 2010, does away with the actors and is translated through space and texts from the play. Her next project, 'Propositions: On text and Space II', a light and text installation, based on texts from Roland Schimmelpfennig's play 'Before/Afterwards', opened at Project 88, Mumbai, in collaboration with Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai in 2011. Devoid of any performers, the installation of the play, investigates the nature of narrative in text, sound, space and light. Her latest project, 'Seen at Secunderabad', in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective, was a multi-media performance that attempted to deconstruct a photograph taken by colonial war photographer Felice Beato in 1857. The project premiered in Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels in 2011.

Personal life

Chaudhuri was previously married to

Manish Choudhary Manish Choudhari is an Indian actor who is best known for his character of Sunil Puri in ''Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year''. He made his film debut in the 2003 Indian film ''Rules: Pyaar Ka Superhit Formula''. He was also seen in the 2021 w ...

, an actor. During marriage they collaborated on many of her productions, such as ''On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning'' and ''Arabian Nights''. Their former group, called Performers at Work, started in 1997 and primarily worked on translating text into visuals. The group has produced works such as ''Siddhartha'' by Hermann Hesse, Virginia Woolf's ''Orlando'' and their very own, ''The Mahabharata Project''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chaudhuri, Zuleikha Indian theatre directors Indian people of Kuwaiti descent Indian people of Saudi Arabian descent Bennington College alumni Lighting designers Living people Indian women theatre directors Year of birth missing (living people)