Foundation for Liberal and Management Education

Faculty Member, FLAME School of Performing Arts

Dean

FLAME School of Performing Arts

About

V S alias Prasad Vanarase, born and brought up in Pune, completed his post graduation from the National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi. He has been involved in theatre activity since his childhood. He was a member of Shishuranjan, Pune - a theatre group working for children. At the age of 16, he founded his own group - Abhijaat Rangabhoomi, Pune in 1985. Since then he has directed more than 50 short plays and full-length plays. He has been involved in Street Theatre to a great extent and has performed around 350 shows of different street plays created on socially relevant issues.

He has worked in Marathi, Hindi, Konkani, Kannada and English. He has translated and adapted plays in Marathi. He has gained proficiency in three interrelated areas - Direction, Administration and Management of arts and Applied Arts. His versatility has enabled him to work with amateurs as well as seasoned professionals.

He is associated with theatre organizations of international repute for the last one decade. He was the Festival Coordinator for the first Prithvi International Theatre Festival in Pune in the year 2000. He is associated with London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). He is National Creative Coordinator of Project Phakama in India. The project was initiated in South Africa in 1996.

He has been involved in theatre training for more than 15 years and has worked as visiting faculty / guest director at several universities and theatre institutes in India and abroad. He was the Project Director of Natyaved, the first collaborative one year course conducted by National School of Drama in Pune. He was Chief of Repertory Company at the prestigious Kala Academy, Goa.

He initiated project Ranga Vardhan, a networking activity for the artists in Maharashtra. Presently more than seventy-five groups are associated with Ranga Vardhan. He had organised several events, which include International Puppetry Festival, Ranga Vardhan Theatre Festival at 25 places in Maharashtra and Goa, collaborative workshops and German festivals with Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), to name a few.

He has won several awards including Award for the Best Director on Experimental Stage for the year 1998 by Natya Darpan, Mumbai and Best Director Award by Kala Gaurav Pratishthan, Pune.

His plays have been performed in various parts of the country in regional and national theatre festivals. The two performances he created with FLAME students and Project Phakama were performed in London International Festival of Theatre, London, UK and Contacting The World, Manchester, UK.

He has been working with the corporate world as a consultant. He has developed and delivered workhops and programmes on Team Building and Group Effectiveness. He has worked jointly with Dr. Mrs. Shyamala Vanarase for Centre for Psychological Services and with Prof. Indira J. Parikh for Centre for Organisational Growth and Excellence. He uses theatre techniques to offer better understanding of team work and group effectiveness. He has conducted workshops for KPIT, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Infosys, Cooper Group, AMDOCS, to name a few.

Since 2005, he is involved in developing a new institution, FLAME, (Foundation for Liberal And Management Education). Initially he worked as an Associate Dean for the FLAME School of Liberal Education. In June 2009, the Foundation decided to initiate a School of Performing Arts.

He is working as Dean, FLAME School of Performing Arts, Pune.

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