Full Frontal

Over the course of a 60-minute audition, guided by a disembodied voice — part director, part conscience, part societal echo — Vinod navigates the full range of his performative self. As memory, desire, myth, cinema and conditioning collide, the audition room becomes a space where masculinity is continuously performed, interrogated and disrupted. Is a feminist man simply another role to master? Or is it something deeper, messier and impossible to fully perform? Blending humour, discomfort, role-play and self-examination, Full Frontal asks: what does it mean to be a man in India today? Cast Performed by: Abhay Mahajan Crew Co-creation: Abhay Mahajan and Sharanya Ramprakash Direction: Sharanya Ramprakash Dramaturgy and Backstage: Sridhar R Prasad Light Design and Execution: aPH and Subodha Subramanya Production Manager: Mahati Systla Produced by: ALIF Commissioned by Flinn Works, Berlin as part of the ‘Men in Feminism’ trilogy. About the Artists Abhay Mahajan Abhay Mahajan is an actor and movement artist whose work spans theatre, cinema and digital storytelling. A founding member of Pune’s Natak Company, he has performed in over 30 theatre productions. Trained at Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bengaluru, Abhay integrates Bharatanatyam, contemporary dance, martial arts, and contact improvisation into his practice. He is also a recipient of the Vinod Doshi Fellowship. Sharanya Ramprakash Sharanya Ramprakash is a Bengaluru-based theatre-maker. She places her work at the intersection of gender, tradition and language. She writes, acts, directs and collaborates with a range of forms, communities and theatre-makers across local, national and international locations. Her work is research-based, collaborative and exploratory. She is a member of the Lincoln Centre Director’s Lab, New York. She is also a recipient of the Shankar Nag Theatre Award 2022. Photo Credits: Mayra Walroff About the Festival PLAYINTERPLAY is a theatre festival with a difference. It celebrates 50 years of the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, bringing together its theatre awardees and scholars to show their work, share their experiences, skills and learnings, and converse on matters of common interest. PLAYINTERPLAY presents plays that are new to Bengaluru. What is different, however, is that it looks back as well as forward, featuring a work of theatre that has been specially revived for the festival and readings of plays that are still to become the finished article. PLAYINTERPLAY does more: it forges connections between its constituent parts — performances, workshops, conversations and experience sharing — emphasising the interplay between thought, learning and practice. See the plays! Apply for the workshops! Join the conversations! Soak in the magic of theatre. About the Artistic Director Anmol Vellani is the founder and former executive director of India Foundation for the Arts, the first independent philanthropic organisation in India devoted exclusively to supporting the arts. He is also the co-founder of Toto Funds the Arts, which nurtures, encourages and rewards new voices and emerging talent in the arts. Anmol did not, however, aspire to become a professional in the field of philanthropy. His early fascination was with the arts, especially theatre and music, and also philosophy, which he studied at the Universities of Poona, Oxford and Cambridge. He taught ethics, logic and the history of philosophy at Elphinstone College, Mumbai, in the 1970s, His writing and talks — on arts entrepreneurship, the creative economy, cultural policy, the role of grant-making foundations, culture and development, arts collaboration and