Profile

Aruna is a performance director, designer, trainer and founder of Visual Respiration, a performance company committed to designing unique audience experiences. She holds an (MA) in Advanced Theatre Practice from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, United Kingdom. She has a Masters in Marketing & Communications with a focus on Communication design and visual media. She is also a graduate in Communication and Design, specialising in photography and film. Aruna is interested in engaging with audiences in unique ways and creating multi-sensorial performance experiences.

Aruna has been in theatre and performance for the last 15 years. Her most recent work, Memory Recipe premiered at The Serendipty Arts Festival in Goa (2016). Her work, Coloured and Choosing was part of the Gender Bender Festival 2016 and explored gender ideas and perspectives. Other works include:

Under Pressure (2019)

- Under Pressure examines Climate Change, consumerism, indigenous wisdom and the politics of nature. The performance presents perspectives - the policy maker, the rag picker, the environmentalist, and the 8000 year old tree as a sensory montage- surreal and poetic

Stand on the Street (2018)

- Stories of Street vendors- their struggles, their aspirations, their survival smarts and their enterprise have been captured as compelling stories while delicious street food is served

I* (2017)

- An actor, writer, singer and a clown take a journey of self-discovery only to find their extremes and everything in between. From experiencing power to finding joy, from embracing failure to celebrating romance, from manipulation to magical beings, come participate in their thirst, in their quest and in their journey, for it could well be yours.

Memory Recipe (2017)

- Experience your relationship with food through an olfactory engagement with sounds and narratives that will take you on a culinary journey of sorts

Knock Knock who’s there (2016)

- A self-discovery experimance (Workshop + Performance) where audience watch performanceand express themselves through words, images, colours, patterns and conversations

A moment of memory (2015)

- A promenade experience where audience intimately experience four personal stories of four women

Swami & Friends by R.K.Narayan (2015)

- A stage adaptation that takes audiences to pre-independent India, dwelling on nostalgia and old world charm

Re:play (2013-2014)

- An immersive, participatory experience through traditional Indian games where audiences play as part of the performance.

Visual Respiration (2012)

- A performance duet that converts digital photographs into analogue stories

Aruna has worked with Daimler and Ashok Leyland for 6 years as part of the Marketing Communication team, working and supporting the brand development and the launch of a new brand of truck in the Indian Market. Her work focused on design thinking, communication delivery and audience experience management.

Bringing together her Corporate experience and Theatre, she designs and facilitates unique learning programmes for Organisations, in the space of Communication, creativity and storytelling. She also works in the Gender, Diversity and Inclusion space in organisations facilitating experiential learning around aspects of unconscious bias and sexual harassment.

She is also an ATSA fellow 2014-15, an arts management fellowship, focused on grooming art managers in South Asia.
She heads Innovations in Inclusion at Interweave Consulting where she brings the performing Arts to create experiential learning programmes,