Aishwarya Walvekar is a scholar specialising in Theatre and Performance Studies, with a strong background in both academic research and practical theatre experience. She is adept at merging theory with practice and is a recipient of EUTOPIA Co-Tutelle PhD Scholarship 2023. Aishwarya is committed to understanding the cultural, social and political nuances of performance while actively engaging in theatre production.
Do stories make places or do places make stories? Instead of diving into such a dichotomous understanding of the relationship between people, culture and politics, Aishwarya Walvekar through the short film displays the uncomfortable co-existence of religious belief systems and modern political values. In attempting to grasp this reality in South Asia through the location of Janakpurdham, Walvekar asserts and questions what place does ‘truth’ hold in such a milieu where religious beliefs, ideological advances, and heritage are constantly performed to churn up a vortex of multiple behaviours. Walvekar, thus, attempts to draw a cinematic ethnography which questions the ‘field’ but also the ‘eye’ and the body that experiences it through the form of storytelling and poetry.
