Bringing a little soul to Andheri

In a city brimming with the arts, Mumbai is surprisingly short of venues that let you display your talent. Sure, we have spaces such as the National Centre for Performing Arts, Prithvi Theatre, Sitara Studio and others, but they are few and far between. So how does one push art and culture in a city like this? One such venue trying to bridge the gap between those who want a platform to perform and an audience that’s willing to appreciate talent, is Brewbot at Andheri.

For the past few months, the first floor of the eatery and pub brewery has seen a whole lot of activity, in the form of stand-up comedy, music performances, poetry reading, storytelling sessions, theatre performances and more. Talking about the idea behind converting the upstairs area, which is essentially a fermentation area, into a thriving performance space venue, Anand Morwani, Co-founder, Director and Executive Chef at Brewbot, says that the idea behind BOTCulture was to provide an experience that goes beyond food and drinks. “We want to bring some soul to Andheri, which is such a cool place but there aren’t enough cool places offering something like this. It’s about community building and bringing like-minded people together,” he says. 

Two years ago, they started doing one-off performances at the venue upstairs but the co-founders of Brewbot, including Anand, Ansh Seth and Ketan Gohel, wanted more. “It was a makeshift space upstairs and our objective was not to do that. We want to push culture and arts into the city. To do that, we realised that we had to first invest into upgrading the infrastructure,” he reveals. Right from the acoustics to the lights and the stage, the  1,500 sq ft area upstairs has undergone a massive change in order to make it a unique experience for the audience that comes to watch the performances there. “Our idea is to have a space that’s completely flexible, so that the performers can change or adapt it according to their requirements,” says Anand. 

As for the performances themselves, Anand says they depend on the right people to help them curate the shows. “People like Tanmay Bhatt, Rohan Joshi, Sumukhi Suresh and many others have done trial shows here, when the idea of BOTCulture was being discussed. We also did theatre with a bunch of groups and a couple of music shows as well,” he says. Their ultimate objective is to have at least 40-45 shows a month. We don’t want to restrict anyone from performing here. Tomorrow, someone wants to perform a Gujarati play, we are more than happy to encourage them!” he signs off.