The Beginning Years of SMART: 2014 to 2016

The preparations for the SMART programme started in 2014 and culminated in the First Edition of the SMART Course launched in 2015. Additionally, SMART was invited to conduct a five-day customised SMART workshop for National School of Drama, New Delhi, addressing the specific needs of the young students, who have more varied paths ahead of them, but much less experience on the ground as theatre professionals. 

Here is a short film of the first edition of the SMART Course 2015:

SMART COURSE: January to August 2015

The course spanned eight months, divided into three phases – Phase I: a ten-day residential foundation course in Bangalore, Phase II: a six-month mentorship period, culminating into Phase III: a two-day workshop in Mumbai, for the presentation of the three-year Strategic Plans of the participating theatre groups. 

SMART Core Team: Arundhati Ghosh, Sameera Iyengar, Sanjna Kapoor, Sudhanva Deshpande, Sunil Shanbag and Swati Apte. 

Course Facilitators and Mentors: The core team served as both facilitators and mentors. Additionally, Milena Dragićević Šešić and Menaka Rodriguez served as co-facilitators; and Menaka Rodriguez, KP Pravin and Rajiv Krishnan as mentors for the course. Milena Professor, University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia and UNESCO Chair, Cultural Policy and Management, was also the consultant for the first edition of the course.

Participants: 75 theatre groups applied through the public call for application, with about 25 groups shortlisted for an interview with a Jury comprising Sameera Iyengar, Satish Alekar and Sunil Shanbag. Of these, 17 groups with 29 individuals were selected, keeping in mind the diversity of languages, regions, forms and practices in the country.

29 participants came from these 17 theatre groups from 11 cities and towns across nine states in India. They were Ahmedabad (Gujarat); Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh); Bangalore (Karnataka); Chennai and Puducherry (Tamil Nadu); New Delhi; Kolkata (West Bengal); Mumbai, Nashik and Pune (Maharashtra), and Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala). They represented a variety of theatre practices and aesthetics, including theatre for children, movement-based theatre, socially-committed/activist theatre and text-based theatre.

Phase I Foundation Course | January 2015 | Fireflies, Bangalore 

The 10-day residential foundation course at Fireflies, Bangalore included 10 planned sessions on understanding the groups’ vision/values; exploring how these groups view their work in the larger artistic and social context; on creating and sustaining a dedicated core team to keep the group alive and thriving; identifying one’s audience, understanding the environment and context within which one works and reaching out to them; reflecting on why they communicate, to whom, and how; understanding financial management; introducing resource mobilisation to think about funds and other resources, clarifying concepts, systems and processes; on administration; and the final session on strategic planning.

During the evenings, there were talks or ‘addas’ organised that brought in an interesting ‘international’ component with speakers from different parts of the world, with open group discussions among the participants and facilitators. The speakers included Ruth Bereson, Dean, LASALLE College of Arts, Singapore; Shubham Roy Choudhury and Sumana Chandrashekar, Programme Executives, Arts Practice programme, IFA, India; Faisal Abu-Alheija, Ahmad al-Rokh and Alan Wright, actors at the Freedom Theatre Group, Palestine; and Alessandra Gariboldi, Coordinator of the Research and Consulting Department of Fondazione Fitzcarraldo, Torino, Italy. 

Phase II Mentorship | February to July 2015 | Via emails, phone calls and Skype calls 

There was a six6-month mentorship period, where groups worked closely with their assigned mentors on their strategic plan, including conducting a strategic analysis of themselves and their ecosystems; articulating the mission, vision and three-year goals; and selecting main strategies to realise these goals.

Phase III Final Workshop | August 2015 | Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai 

The culmination of the course was the two-day final workshop at Goethe-Insitut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, where all the groups presented their strategic plan, and received feedback on it, generating a robust discussion. In addition, each group reviewed and critiqued the written plan of another group. Participants discussed candidly their experience of taking back their learnings from the foundation course to their respective groups, and the challenges they faced in framing their strategic plans. Through the two days, experts like Sadanand Menon, Samik Bandyopadhyay, Satish Alekar and Ashoke Chatterjee, who were present, shared stories of what strategic management has meant in different contexts through the history of theatre in India.

Many from the theatre world, media, sponsors and supporters of the arts gathered to mark the completion of the course at the Graduation Ceremony. The chief guest was Satish Alekar, who delivered a wonderful speech, which was followed by a celebratory party. There was a very visible sense of camaraderie across the groups. They had formed a community, supporting each other in their work, collaborating and leaning on each other for collaboration on thoughts and ideas, as well as for production support while on the move. This cross-country network that has evolved has expanded their sense of the history and legacy they belong to, without feeling tied down by the past, and made them more ambitious for each other and for the ecology of theatre practice in the future.

Internal Evaluation from participants, facilitators, mentors and speakers; and External Evaluation by an external evaluator, Ashoke Chatterjee, throughout the SMART Course, served to inform its next edition. 

CCRT-NSD Workshop, October 2015

SMART was invited to conduct a five-day workshop for the second-year students at the National School of Drama (NSD), funded by Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT). A customised five-day SMART workshop was created factoring in the specific needs of this younger group, with more varied paths ahead of them and much less experience on the ground as theatre professionals. 

Facilitators: Arundhati Ghosh, Sameera Iyengar, Sudhanva Deshpande, Sunil Shanbag and Swati Apte from the core team, along with Devika Rani Sathyamoorthy (Copyrights and Best Practices) and Noshir Dadrawala (Legal Compliance). 

The first edition of SMART was supported by the Norwegian Royal Embassy; Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS); and the Bajaj Group. Additionally, SMART received support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai, with partnership for venue support for the Final Workshop; Indigo Airlines, with discounted tickets; and the Italian Embassy, with delegate support for a key speaker of the evening sessions at the Foundation Course.

The SMART Workshop at National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi in FY 2016-17 was funded by Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT).