Varoon P. Anand

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Varoon P. Anand

Preferred pronouns:

No pronoun preference
Birth year:

1979
Primarily based in or works from:

India
Skills:

teaching directing of a stage play cultural facilitation acting community work sound design
Topics:

collaboration community data visualisation educational gender technology
Contact information:

Currently working on:

Currently leading a digital arts administration program in the Mekong Region while collaborating with Fringe Ensemble (Bonn) on a Goethe-Institut funded production exploring public spaces, bringing together international artists and administrators.

Quick Facts:

Varoon P. Anand is the artistic Director of Kaivalya Plays Foundation (registered NGO in India) with over a decade of experience in theatre, journalism, and arts administration. Besides, Anand is a multilingual facilitator fluent in English, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, Portuguese, and Punjabi, specializing in applied improvisation for mental health and language learning.

Pioneer in adapting Hispanic theatre for Indian audiences with over twenty commissions from Spanish-speaking embassies (2014-2024), Varoon was the first Indian director to showcase their work at Almagro Classical Theatre Festival, Spain.

Varoon was cultural manager at Instituto Cervantes New Delhi and Award recipient of prestigious grants like the International Koproduction Fund (2025), EU Horizon's Mediafutures (2023), Moleskine Foundation's Creativity Pioneers Fund (2023), IFA Research Grant (2022), and Gender Bender (2019) and Refunction (2018) by Goethe-Institut.

Moreover, Anand is an active journalist serving as India correspondent for Radio France Internationale, FRANCE 24, and Alianza Informativa Latinoamericana and facilitator with React UK specializing in Forum theatre; former Trustee of The Nursery Theatre, UK.

Anand is also a collaborative researcher at Vanderbilt and Duke Universities on intellectual risk-taking in language learning through theatre.

Selected for At-Work Creative Leadership Programme (Milan, 2024) and recipient of Cross Cultural Programme Synergy grant for collaboration with Fringe Ensemble, Bonn.

Three relevant works from the last 5 years of artistic practice:

Highest educational degree:

Bachelor's of Science

Work samples:

MINING HATE

Mining Hate (2023-2024): An improvised interactive performance raising awareness about anonymous hackers targeting journalists and minorities in India to spread disinformation.
All text used is taken verbatim from reports on the incidents involing Nidhi Razdan’s fake
Harvard job offer, the Git-hub apps "Sulli Deals” and "Bulli Bai" apps that humiliated female
Muslim journalists. The show uses audience-generated content to demonstrate hacking
techniques and presents verbatim accounts from affected journalists. Winner of the Artist
for Media MediaFutures grant, an EU-funded initiative, Mining Hate premiered in June
2023 at the Design Zentrum Hamburg during MediaFutures Demo Days. It was later
performed at: Theater im OP, CAPAS Festival 2024, Göttingen (May 2024) Hansa Haus, Bad Godesberg, Bonn (June 2024) The project also initiated the Propaganda Narratives
Residency in New Delhi (April 2023), bringing together artists, creative technologists, and
dramatists to engage critically with the subject matter.

ABSURDO

A theatrical exploration of absurdist works by Spanish and Cuban playwrights Enrique Jardiel Poncela, Fernando Arrabal, and Virgilio Piñera. The production blends traditional theatre with non-conventional staging, including live projections, cameras, drawing, and multilayered projection fabrics. Performed in English, Hindi, and Spanish with subtitles, ABSURDO features adaptations of short stories and plays that delve into themes of identity, civil rebellion, capitalism, and mental health. The show premiered on November 27-29, 2023, at Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi, Connaught Place. This project marks Kaivalya Plays' thirteenth collaboration bringing Latin American literature to Indian stages, showcasing their ongoing commitment to international cultural exchange.

Unravel

Recipient of the inaugural Refunction grant from Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan. Unravel was selected to open the Old World Theatre Festival in 2019 and continues to be performed as an online performance. The next performance will be held on June 11th at the Global EGIH improv festival. An original, interactive production focused on the therapeutic effects of improv theatre. Unravel is an interactive theatre production bringing experiences with mental health and wellness to the fore. The ensemble uses spontaneous improv, theatre exercises and audience suggestions to devise the final performance on the spot.

AGUEBAO

Recipient of the Gender Bender grant from Sandbox Collective and Goethe Institut Bangalore. Aguebao explores the value of human identity, especially gender, as commodified by data. Presented through installation, and a 15-minute performance at Gender Bender 2019, Aguebao uncovers how our present relationship with technology reveals more than we intend to about ourselves while neither realizing how much we’ve given away consensually nor creating an image that is an accurate representation of who we are. Aguebao was also selected for the ReConnect festival in Iran and performed digitally in 2020.