Commissions

A Breath Held Long is a 20–25-minute video by Sudarshan Shetty that merges documentary filmmaking with theatre and music. Set within the charged, ever-shifting landscape of Mumbai, the film captures the tempo of the city through a series of long, single-line narratives performed by six to seven professional actors and a singer. Each voice adds to a growing chorus that meditates on the act of breathing – both as a basic human necessity and as a metaphor for survival, resilience, and the passage of time.

Accompanying the video are a series of sculptural objects by Shetty that extend the film’s thematic concerns into physical form. These objects, characteristic of Shetty’s sculptural language, serve as silent counterpoints to the spoken word. 

Together, the video and sculptures form an installation that asks — what it means to live and breathe — in a restless city.

Originally commissioned by Serendipity Arts for the Serendipity Arts Festival 2025 and produced by Apostrophe 99

Set within a historic Goan building, Razai is a multidisciplinary performance that fuses AI-generated music, projection-mapped visuals, and contemporary dance into a sensory and living tapestry. Drawing from both European and Indian sonic traditions, this avant-garde piece traces the intimate journey of a couple on the margins of an ever-shifting city — navigating nostalgia, displacement, desire, and dreams. 

Created through a collaboration between artists from India, Italy, and Japan, it’s a performative intervention where architecture, technology, and human presence coalesce into one evolving sensorial journey — blurring the lines between art and life, remembered, lived and imagined.

During and beyond show hours, the venue transforms into an interactive installation, where audiences move from observers to participants, engaging with responsive environments shaped by cutting-edge AI and sensory technologies.

Commissioned by Serendipity Arts for Serendipity Arts Festival 2025.

Responding to the evolving socio-political landscape, this year’s residency invites choreographers to propose works-in-progress that embody the pulse of our times — responding through movement to themes such as climate crisis, war, division, migration, displacement, gender dynamics, and existential shifts. Guided by two renowned choreographers from India and the UK, the participants shape their raw ideas into fully realized performances within a safe, collaborative environment. Each work becomes a living folio: a page drawn from lived experience, collective memory, and imagined futures, expressed somatically.

Folios of Time 2.0 offers a vital platform for bold, contemporary voices and fresh expressions from the body of young India.

Folios of Time 2.0 is commissioned by Serendipity Arts for Serendipity Arts Festival 2025

A medical college. The human body. You might expect examination, diagnosis and treatment, but Duty Free serves up movement encounters and sensorial discoveries. Rather like its namesake at the airport, it sets itself up as a space of wonder and curiosity. Over eight days, three dance artists take turns inhabiting a riverfront verandah in the Old Goa Medical College building, making it both studio and stage.

Duty Free is open through the day, functioning as an exhibition space and embodied archive, interspersing the behind-the-scenes labour of dance – improvisation, repetition, failure – with performances and workshops at scheduled intervals. Its artists set up interactions that are tactile, embodied, textual and aural, offering movement prompts and traces of their practice for you to engage with.

On the other side of the street, offshore casinos floating in the Mandovi river toe the ambiguous line between land and water. Think of Duty Free then as ‘shore leave’ – an interval filled with excitement, liberty and play. Here, dance offers a space outside of duty – beyond the logics of obligation, efficiency and outcome. As you pass through it, you might indulge in something new – seeing, hearing, sensing or moving as you’ve never done before.

Duty Free was commissioned by Serendipity Arts for Serendipity Arts Festival 2025.

Puppetry is one of the oldest art forms in India, with a 3000 year old history and twenty-three living forms in existence currently, practiced by generational puppeteers across India. Modern puppetry is however a few decades old in India where the practice has been carried by a few individuals and companies. 

Serendipity Arts launched Puppet Folk Arts Lab to mentor and facilitate new work by traditional puppeteers from across India. Contemporary versions of traditional forms of puppetry will be performed at the festival. 

The performances are commissioned by Serendipity Arts for Serendipity Arts Festival 2025.

This narrative revolves around an erstwhile pivotal yet forgotten facet of Marathi theatre — the art of prompting. Prompting, an indispensable component of theatrical performances, has evolved significantly over time, transitioning from human prompters in the golden era of musical dramas in the 1890s to the sophisticated teleprompters of today. The story centers around the life of Damodar, a diligent prompter who played a crucial role in the success of the iconic musical drama “Sangeet Sharada”. Through Damodar’s biography, the narrative offers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes dynamics of a theatrical performance, showcasing the trials and tribulations faced by the prompter as the drama unfolds on stage.

The narrative not only sheds light on the intricacies of Marathi theatre but also pays tribute to the unsung heroes who contribute to its success. By exploring Damodar’s life, the story provides a unique perspective on the world of theatre, emphasizing the value of every individual’s role in creating a captivating performance.

This project is commissioned by the Serendipity Arts Foundation for the Serendipity Arts Festival, 2025.