Yiku Ellias, the global dramatist

While Yuki Ellias went to drama school in Paris everyday, her
parents made sure her bills were cleared. And what better way to pay back than by passing on the baton to theatre enthusiasts who are willing to think out of the box.  And the 30 year old is candid, “After a few years of drama school in Paris…I still wasn’t sure if I could really call theatre a career. So far, I was in real debt — doing theatre in Mumbai paid no bills. My parents paid for me to study theatre at the Jaques Lecoq School for Theatre in Paris. It was a huge gift of love, and a leap of faith.”

Daughter of well-known photographer Rafeeq Ellias and
editor Bina Sarkar, Yuki feels that her practice of theatre evolves out of her trans-continental projects. “My practice is influenced by my experiences in India and abroad. I have worked extensively as a performer and teacher in many countries.” After touring the world with Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and choreographing in UK, Yuki is in Mumbai to teach some interesting theatre.

With interesting themes in workshops like Violence in Performance, Urban Spaces and Theatre Design and Commedia in the City, Yuki explains her stream of thought. “The theme is an entry point to explore the potential content and its dramatic transpositions. There are many, many ways into creation. I provide an opportunity to identify personal processes and engage in new practices, and seriously develop work as performer-creators.”

For her current workshop titled Many Lives, she borrows a leaf out of the pages of literature, the stage and life around the common man.  Yuki explains, “Many Lives attempts to explore the hypocrisies and the fantasies, the loves and bitterness, joys and desperation of characters from literature, the stage and those around us everyday. From the private and public persona, to duality and delusion, the self, the possibility of transformation and the hope of salvation.”