Nautanki Bazaar

After four amazing weeks we concluded our very first workshop yesterday and what an incredible time we had reading, learning and discussing two really great and important playwrights - Henrik Ibsen and Harold Pinter. Thank you Apoorva for sharing with us some great knowledge and insights about playwrighting and reading! We learned so much! And also to all the participants who attended our workshop! What a fun bunch we all made!

🎭 HOW TO READ A PLAY WORKSHOP 🎭

Ever wondered what makes a play truly grip an audience?

This 4-part workshop dives into simple, practical ways to read, discuss, and interpret plays - not academically, but as stories. We’ll explore what makes a play 'play' - the elements that keep audiences leaning forward instead of heading for the exit.

📖 Over 4 sessions, we’ll read:
• Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
• Betrayal by Harold Pinter

Each session includes:
✨ Reading the first half of the play
✨ Breaking down its storytelling craft

👤 Led by Apoorva Kale, a playwright whose work has been staged in New York, London, and Mumbai, with training from The New School for Drama and commissions from the Royal Court Theatre and Unga Riksteater.

🗓 Dates: May 9, 16, 23, 30, 2026
⏰ 4 sessions | 11am-1pm
📍 Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas Street East, Toronto

💸 FREE (with a refundable damage deposit)

📩 For more details, email us - [email protected]

Our first reading of 2026 is in the books! We read "Behsharam" by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. Thank you to everyone who braved the weather to attend. See you all next month.

Happy 2026! Nautanki Bazaar's "Play Reading Club" returns on Fri, Jan 16 where we'll be reading "Behsharam", a play in English by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti - Two daughters, two mothers, one father, a cardboard cut-out and a foul mouthed granny, a household at war and a family which will do anything to protect its secrets.

Behsharam is Bhatti's first play. It broke box office records at Soho Theatre and Birmingham Rep when it opened in 2001.

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti (born 1968) was a core writer on The Archers from 2012 to 2019. She has also written for EastEnders and Hollyoaks. In 2025, her adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s Marriage Material will be produced at the Lyric Hammersmith and her play Choir will open at Chichester Festival Theatre.

Friday, Jan 16 at 7pm at the Daniels Spectrum, Toronto

RSVP Now to [email protected]

Another great evening where we read Ayad Akhtar's "Disgraced." Thank you to all who came. We're off in December and will return in January!

Nautanki Bazaar's "Play Reading Club" returns on Fri, Nov 14 where we'll be reading "Disgraced" by Ayad Akhtar - When Amir and his artist wife, Emily, host an intimate dinner party at their Upper East Side New York apartment, what starts put as a friendly conversation soon escalates into something far more damaging.

Disgraced (2012) is the first stage play by playwright, novelist, and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar. The play, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and has also been recognized with a 2012 Joseph Jefferson Award for New Work – Play or Musical and a 2013 Obie Award for Playwriting. The 2014 Broadway transfer earned a nomination for Tony Award for Best Play in 2015.

Ayad Akhtar (born October 28, 1970) is an American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. He is the only South Asian to have won the Pultizer Prize in Drama.

Friday, Nov 14 at 7pm at the Daniels Spectrum

RSVP Now to [email protected]

We were back after the summer with a great reading of "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen, superbly adapted by Tanika Gupta. Thank you to all who came and we'll see you next month! 😀

And we're back!!!!! Nautanki Bazaar's "Play Reading Club" returns on Fri, Oct 10 where we'll be reading "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen in a new adaptation by Tanika Gupta - Niru is a young Bengali woman married to an English colonial bureaucrat, Tom. Tom loves Niru, exoticising her as a frivolous plaything to be admired and kept. But Niru has a long-kept secret. And just as she thinks she is almost free of it, it threatens to bring her life crashing down around her.

Tanika Gupta reimagines Ibsen’s classic play of gender politics through the lens of British colonialism, offering a bold, female perspective exploring themes of ownership and race.

Tanika Gupta MBE FRSL (born 1 December 1963) is a British playwright. Apart from her work for the theatre, she has also written scripts for television, film and radio plays. Over the past 25 years Tanika has written over 25 stage plays that have been produced in major theatres across the UK.

Friday, Oct 10 at 7pm at the Daniels Spectrum

RSVP Now to [email protected]

Another fun play reading last night where we read Girish Karnad's "Hayavadana" 🐴 A big thank you to everyone who came out and we'll see you in May!

Nautanki Bazaar's "Play Reading Club" returns on Thu, April 17 where we'll be reading Girish Karnad's "Hayavadana" - The play tells the story of two friends who are in love with the same woman and who accidentally swap heads. The narrative also tells the story of a man with a horse's head who seeks to become human.

Written in 1971, it was based on a theme drawn from The Transposed Heads, a 1940 novella by Thomas Mann, which is originally found in the 11th-century Sanskrit text Kathasaritsagara. It also employed the folk theatre form of Yakshagana.

Girish Karnad (19 May 1938 – 10 June 2019) was an Indian actor, film director, writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi films. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India.

Thursday, April 17 at 7pm at the Daniels Spectrum 

RSVP Now to [email protected]