Be Well, Sindu

After loading the truck for the theatre, Sindu Singh (mid row, left) with the cast and crew of Boiled Beans on Toast.

If you're reading this you probably know that Sindu Singh, our Co-Artistic Director, is leaving the company. You can read her farewell note here.

Sindu and I have been equal partners in running BADCo since its inception. After Ravi Bhatnagar, the founding AD retired, we have run the company together, and almost entirely by ourselves. It’s a lot of work - managing the business, the marketing, the productions, the sets, the props, the studio. And then there are all the decisions that have to be made - the season, the venues, casting and so many more. To all of it, she brought her energy, her passion and her superb judgement as a theatre artist. Her departure is an incalculable loss to this company, to our community of artists and to me, her Co AD.

Besides running the company with me, Sindu directed some of our most memorable shows - Dance Like a Man, Counter Offence, Wedding Album, The Invisible Hand and Boiled Beans on Toast. Actors love to work with her. She brings out the best in them, even first-time actors. Her attention to detail is uncompromising. Even now people talk about the sets of Dance Like a Man, a play we staged in 2015. Her sense of what looks good on stage, what looks beautiful, dramatic or what will touch your heart, is unmatched.

But perhaps her true calling is and has always been as an actor. On stage she is a force of nature. As she often says herself “On stage I feel connected to the universe”. She can carry off a sophisticated, Silicon Valley venture capitalist (Roma in Greater Than) with as much aplomb as a middle class Delhi housewife (Bimla in Divided By). She can effortlessly go from class to crass, from American accented English to small town Hindi. She’s done young North Indian roles (Naina in A Doll’s House) and old South Indian roles (Ratna in Dance Like a Man). She can lift a show just by the force of her acting. Something she did with so many of ours.

We have discussed this over and over again. I understand she has to leave and this is what is best for her. But still, I hope she comes back to theatre one day - to make theatre again, with us. It would be marvelous.

In the meanwhile, all of us - the community of artists associated with BADCo and I’m sure our loyal patrons - we all wish her our fondest farewells and hope that she gets healthy soon. We send her our “healing vibes”, as she would have said. We hope she keeps learning with her new found passion of poetry and classical singing. Perhaps some day she will have a ghazal recital somewhere and we will say to the new actors at rehearsal –

That flame that burns so bright in the distance

Once lit this stage on fire

We will miss you. I will miss you. Be well.

– Basab Pradhan