
Bengaluru's working professionals are increasingly balancing demanding jobs with a passion for theatre, with about 90% of city theatre group members being part-timers who hold day jobs. Many squeeze rehearsals into weekends…
Bengaluru's working professionals are increasingly balancing demanding jobs with a passion for theatre, with about 90% of city theatre group members being part-timers who hold day jobs. Many squeeze rehearsals into weekends or early mornings to avoid traffic, driven purely by passion as financial payoff is minimal.

Among those balancing both worlds is Sindhu Savanur, 29, a senior financial modelling analyst at HSBC, who joined theatre group Theatrenama in 2021 after putting her interest on hold for studies. Sambit Debnath, 34, a business development leader at Flipkart and an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, says theatre demands authenticity and lets performers drop all facades.
The inclusive scene welcomes newcomers through workshops, WhatsApp groups and social media. Manoj Balaji, CEO of TatvaCare, notes it is easier to enter theatre in Bengaluru than in Mumbai, where only a few big companies dominate. Performers often pool money to cover production costs themselves.
Bengaluru’s theatre scene has long been a refuge for professionals seeking creative outlets outside their high-pressure tech jobs. The city’s unique mix of a large, mobile workforce and a strong Kannada theatre tradition has created a parallel English and Hindi amateur circuit. With production costs often borne by the performers themselves rather than commercial sponsors, the barrier to entry is low, anyone with time and passion can join. The key metric to watch is whether this informal ecosystem can sustain itself as work-from-home policies shrink, cutting into the weekday rehearsal time that working professionals have come to rely on.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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