SDDS Education and the University of Melbourne's Victorian College of Arts have been offering a number of courses focused on Acting. SDDS Education has been collaborating with well-known Indian theatre people for its programmes and this time around, playwright Mahesh Dattani and actors Nandita Das and Subodh Maskara will be forming a panel that will evaluate the final day performance by the students participating in an eight-day programme. We talk to Mahesh Dattani about his role in this panel and of what he expects from the performance by the participants.  By Deepa Punjani Deepa Punjani (DP): You are collaborating with SDDS Education and will be joined by Nandita Das and Subodh Maskara on a panel that will evaluate the final performance by a group of select actors. What led you to it? Mahesh Dattani (MD): I was invited by Dalip Sondhi of SDDS to be on the panel, especially since they are using the text of my play WHERE THERE'S A WILL for their final presentation. Subodh and I have been working closely on choosing texts and productions for his 'Cineplay' venture, involving digital reproductions of well known plays in production. Since I am also looking for new talent, I thought this might be a good idea! DP: Will you only be evaluating the final performance or will you be following the progress of the actors through their training workshop? MD: I will be evaluating the final presentation on 5th May. I would love to sit in on the workshop, but being a facilitator myself, I know how intrusive it can be especially if the students are working on unfamiliar aspects of theatre acting. DP: The training programme apparently lasts only 8 days. What kind of final performance do you expect? MD: I will view it as a presentation rather than a performance. I will review it only in the context of what they were working on during the course of the workshop. Even if they worked on one aspect of scene work, I will be most interested to see how they apply it to the scenes presented. DP: What do you feel about the programmes offered by SDDS? How different are they from the other theatre programmes and workshops on offer? MD: I think SDDS brings about a great deal of professionalism to what they do. Their faculty has an impressive track record of experience and training behind them. I am sure there are other programmes that do that too, but I think this is a great opportunity to work cross culturally as well. DP: Will you also be conducting workshops in collaboration with SDDS? MD: If they ask me to, I would be most interested. 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