I use theatre as a tool for change inside organisations, classrooms and communities. Twenty five years of turning difficult conversations into experiences people actually remember.
Global Communication & Training Lead / TEDx & Keynote Speaker / Drama-Based Facilitator / International Theatre Director / Radio Journalist / Published Author
years across applied theatre, corporate communication and consulting
corporate clients across seven industries and three continents
people reached through 600+ programmes and performances
years of uninterrupted theatre, every weekend since 2003
My grandfather was a playwright and a teacher. The family was called Prabhat, and theatre was simply the air in the house. I studied Fine Art at Chitra Kala Parishat in Bangalore dreaming of a career in advertising, and it was there that theatre found me properly for the first time.
The advertising career happened. Saatchi & Saatchi, Mudra, Percept Gulf in Dubai, George P. Johnson, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, then AXA. Award winning campaigns, brand work, internal communication at scale. But every weekend, without a break, I was doing theatre.
In 2003 I co-founded Yours Truly Theatre in Bangalore. For eleven years I ran both lives in parallel before going all in. In 2015 I left the corporate track and built Life Unscripted, a consulting practice that puts applied theatre to work on the things organisations find hardest to talk about: bias, harassment, belonging, grief, change, ethics.
As an artiste, I have a responsibility to make theatre more relevant, accessible and to innovate.Nandini Rao, "A Festival of Ideas"
Today I work between India and the Netherlands. I train, coach, direct, speak, write, and present a weekly radio programme in The Hague.
Theatre became the soft cushion that held me together, especially at times when I felt I was going to fall apart. It lets you work through your traumas and your pain. That is the same thing I bring into a boardroom, only with better lighting.
Art direction and brand communication at Saatchi & Saatchi, Mudra, Percept Gulf Dubai, George P. Johnson, Infosys and Tech Mahindra, then Communication, D&I, Sustainability and CSR at AXA.
Free performances for NGOs, hospitals, hospices, destitute homes, labour camps, juvenile homes and prisons. Format development in the YTT Lab. Campus programmes at IISc, IIT, ISB and IIM. Edinburgh Fringe in 2012.
Built alongside the AXA role from 2013, full time from June 2015. First major client: Volvo India D&I Week. Now 129 clients across India, the Netherlands and internationally.
Every programme is built from scratch for the room it is walking into. Nothing off the shelf.
Performance-led interventions on the subjects that policy decks cannot reach. People watch themselves on stage, and then talk honestly for the first time.
Experiential workshops where managers and leaders rehearse the hard conversation before they have to have it for real, with professional actors on the other side of the table.
Longer engagements that move a team from difficult or mediocre to high performing and genuinely energised. Applied theatre, story circles and breakout work, then a report the leadership can act on.
A performance runs, the room reacts, and then the audience steps in and changes what happens next. That is where the learning actually lands.
Live, in the roomManagement consulting that uses applied theatre as a tool for awareness and change. The name comes from Eric Berne's idea of taking control of your own life script, crossed with the spontaneity of improvisation.
An improvisational and interactive theatre company working across social change, education and the corporate sector. Listed on Wikipedia under Theatre of India for developing original improvisational formats.
From blind schools and labour camps to the Edinburgh Fringe, and back to a Monday morning boardroom. Every weekend, without a break, for twenty two years.
Yours Truly TheatreGoldman Sachs · LinkedIn · Cisco · Volvo · Sony · Samsung · Novo Nordisk · GSK · AB InBev · Target · Lowe's · IBM · Walmart · Mercedes-Benz · Swiss Re · Akamai · Bosch · Infosys · Jaguar Land Rover · DP World · Thermo Fisher · GE Healthcare · Hitachi Energy · Nokia India · Oxford University Press · Dassault Systèmes · Titan · Solvay · Bharat Electronics · HAL
It started when a teacher at a blind school in Bangalore invited us to perform for her students. We went on to perform across blind schools for children and adults, and finally staged a public show where blind children and blindfolded sighted audiences shared the same experience. It became the Beyond Abilities workshop, now delivered in corporates and universities.
Watch the BBC film ↗A ten day applied improvisation programme designed for three batches of PhD researchers under India's national UGC STRIDE scheme. Playback Theatre, role play and experiential learning used to build reflexivity, deep listening, narrative inquiry and comfort with ambiguity. The methodology is now published as Chapter 2 of a Routledge book.
Read the chapter ↗A change management communication intervention delivered as an original musical, written for the client. They invited us back for a second engagement in the same quarter.
A full organisational development intervention for Akamai's Media Engineering team, combining applied theatre, Story Circle listening hours with 50+ people per batch, and breakout conversations. Findings went back to managers as real observations about their own team rather than as case studies. Cited internally as a best practice.
Watch the case study ↗A ten year relationship with Bharat Electronics Limited built around a recurring theatre-based induction format, now scaled to four batches and 240+ R&D joinees at the Nalanda Academy, alongside a mentoring programme for around 200 mentors.
Directed a theatre performance on violence against women in Delft, my first production performed in Dutch for a multilingual audience. Hosted by INGLAL, attended by the Mayor of Delft, with organisations from women's rights, migrant and refugee support and social inclusion sectors filling the room.
Keynotes on art and theatre applied to leadership, women's empowerment and education, across India and the Netherlands.
An interactive talk arguing that appreciating art should be unique and personal, not squeezed into a template handed down by other people. Over 10,000 plays on TED.
Open on TED.com ↗Presenter and city journalist on The Hague's English-language community radio programme.
Chapter 2, co-authored with the Yours Truly Theatre team.
On running two careers for eleven years, rebuilding identity after loss, and creativity as courage.
Listed for developing original improvisational theatre formats.
On confidence, the resurgence of improv, and theatre in the corporate sector.
Every episode of the show, on demand.
Women Entrepreneur Connect, Hoofddorp, Netherlands
iCONGO with the United Nations, New Delhi
World HRD Congress, Mumbai
Asia Training & Development Excellence Awards, Singapore
Women Entrepreneur Connect, Netherlands
British Council
National recognition
“I write to thank you for the exceptional experience Yours Truly created for 60 Swiss Re women yesterday. The fluidity with which the team wove all the different responses from the audience was a truly powerful experience.”
“Nandini and team were so intuitive. They saw resistance on day one, took the feedback, and from the next session onwards it was a huge change. The entire team, both Akamai and Life Unscripted, were one team together.”
“Nandini involved herself from day one and took note of what our needs were, and conceptualised the entire intervention from that. It was participant driven, powerful, and it had a lasting impact.”
“The difference she made to the creative work was there for everyone to see. Her passion for theatre was a big strength in developing really compelling experience marketing solutions.”
Available for consulting engagements, keynotes, workshops, theatre direction and coaching, in India, the Netherlands and online.