At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavour, we invited Nandini Rao for an exclusive interview with us. She is an Entrepreneur, Leader, Trainer, Coach, Consultant, Mentor and Change Enabler. Nandini is the Founder of Life Unscripted Consulting. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, background, and advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Nandini:
We are aware of your contributions to the ecosystem; talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
It started with the bug of creativity, even in high school while the world around me was hyper-focused on engineering & medicine as options, I found myself fascinated with arts and hence joined Fine Art college with a dream of having a career in advertising. In college, I was exposed to theatre and l felt at home immediately. Over the years it has been a fine balancing act of working in various corporate companies and weekends dedicated to developing the theatre group Yours Truly Theatre’.
The solo women leader journey began in 2013 onwards when I had to take up the responsibility of running the theatre group single-handedly along with a very supportive team.
The next milestone was when I decided to quit my full-time corporate career to start the consulting company ‘ Life Unscripted’ which combined my passion for theatre and the corporate experience in a meaningful way.”
Today both Yours Truly Theatre and Life Unscripted are active in spite of the covid impact. While Yours Truly Theatre is now run and led by the young generation, Life Unscripted continues to deliver Theatre Based interventions for more than 80 plus brands with both having a presence in Europe.
How did you discover your passion for ‘Theatre Based Training & Coaching?
I was blessed to be born into the family ‘Prabhat’ which has a reputation for four generations of artists, in fact, my grandfather was a playwright and teacher.
However, I believe we all have the creative bug and it is about giving ourselves permission to explore that side of us, in fact in my TED talk I talk in-depth about why many fear Art while being curious about it along with few basic principles of Art Appreciation (https://www.ted.com/talks/nandini_rao_art_appreciation_and_you)
I train, coach, perform and reach out to around 1000 people in a year for the last twenty years nonstop. That keeps me alive and kicking. I believe in the power of theatre for personal transformation, learning, and change in communities.
With so much going on, how do you start the day to keep your passion alive?
It’s the other way around, the passion keeps me alive.
The passion has healed me in most traumatic times, allowed me to find myself every time and helped me to meet people I could have never met, gave me a platform to visit places I would have otherwise never visited and hear stories I would have never heard.”
It gives me the power to stand in my own truth and own it unapologetically.
How leadership qualities can help with your career or business growth?
True leadership for me is about being truly inspired. If I believe in something I can make others believe in otherwise not. In theatre there is this magic mantra many call “I believe”, if an actor doesn’t believe he or she is the character, it’s not possible to make the audience believe in it either.
Be the first one to take the risk – Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre guru says we must be ready to take the same risk first before asking the audience to take the same. The same applies when we work with newcomers who want to learn theatre or with organizations we work with or audiences we perform for.
Creativity is rehearsed spontaneity– While the moment of magic is witnessed by the world, many underestimate the disciplined processes which go behind the spontaneous success. While we are all creatively gifted one way or the other, one must put in dedicated time to indulge in the process to find the gold.
Learning how to celebrate failures and stay grounded in success – Having a space where failures are not just accepted but celebrated. I tell my actors before a show to go make as many mistakes as possible and enjoy making those mistakes. At the same time, many don’t know how to handle success and get carried away and that’s the moment learning journey stops.
Challenge comfort zone – I have taken many leaps of faith and of course, they are testing times no doubt, eventually, I have always looked back at them and been proud of the process and learnings. The latest one is moving to Europe, learning Dutch and finding myself in a completely unfamiliar environment. The fear and insecurities are real and at the same time, it amazes me how fast we as humans adapt.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
The question assumes success is desirable and there is a key to it.
I believe the journey is more important and enjoying every step is critical. Success is not a station we will arrive at but a continuous process of finding what makes us complete.
For me, as an artist, I try to focus on the feeling of ‘Completion’ than ‘Perfection’. For example, let’s say a painting may not be anywhere close to perfection, but it gives the painter the feeling that its complete or the process of creation is complete. There is deep satisfaction in that experience.”
Of course, it’s also the moment artist has to detach himself/herself from the creation and present it to the world for any kind of responses. No wonder Art teaches one tough lessons of life and management.
Given the rapid pace at which the world is changing, what themes do you address?
As a team, we have been working on themes of Gender, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Anti sexual harassment in the workplace, and LGBTQIA inclusion. While we do offer learning programs for leadership, creativity, communication, manager effectiveness, values & ethics, and team dynamics to organizational development programs.
Today all of us have very micro attention spans and in this media, cluttered theatre gives space for meaningful conversations.
Please share with us – what has worked well for you so far.
What has worked for me is the support system I have right from parents, sibling, friends who have encouraged my choices to my all-supportive life partner. This journey has been possible with all the people who have contributed their time, energy, and ideas in developing this theatre group right from 2003 when we started till today. Soon we are on our way to complete 20 years of non-stop theatre. Twenty years of true magic.
We know that you are continuously engaged in helping others achieve their goals. Why do you do that?
I have been fortunate to have many mentors in life who have guided me through my challenges and helped me become the person I am today.
Not sure if I help others achieve their goals, but I see my job as a mentor to mirror. To help them reflect with theatre as a medium and the stage becoming a platform to experiment with the risky things we are scared to do it in life. That’s where the theatre experience turns therapeutic.
Finally, the joy one experiences doing theatre can’t be contained hence it is natural that the energy spreads to the group and eventually to the audience.
What about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
I would say the failures, the risks, and the challenges lead to the treasure of learning.
Watching smiles on children’s faces when we perform, listening to stories of strangers and performing them back, having a moment when the audience goes ‘wow’ or has a strong reaction or when participants in training sessions completely disagree are potent moments of change.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
Accept the vulnerability and don’t judge yourself too hard too soon. Everyone has something unique to offer, the journey is about finding what clicks for you, relishing it, and then sharing it with the world.
At the same time having a realistic grounding and understanding financial sustainability of one’s idea and passion. A career is an art is a decision that has to be made mindfully with a complete understanding of the constraints of one’s choices.
On the other hand, if you are too busy with academics or a corporate career, do take time out to pursue your passion for arts or sports. It gives more purpose to life and joy to the soul.
Last but not least, what is the feedback from businesses and organizations who have adapted theatre-based methodologies?
As part of Life Unscripted, we have worked with more than 80 plus brands like LinkedIn, Goldman Sach, BOSCH, SONY, Walmart, Samsung to name a few. Most of them have reached out to us year after year which is the best testimony of how theatre-based interventions and learning sessions can create deep and long-lasting impact.
Through Yours Truly theatre we have performed for at least 25 NGOs per year over the last two decades and multiple education institutions. All these are free of cost as the objective has been to take theatre to people rather than expect people to come to the theatre. We are a self-funded organization, which allows us to choose the kind of content we like to commit to working with, and on the other hand, it has its own constraints.
Both Yours Truly theatre and Life Unscripted have been able to provide professional quality of theatre based interventions in various sectors using multiple formats of theatre like playback theatre, Forum theatre, Improv comedy and formats devised at Yours truly lab like Complete the story, Mushaira theatre, Kannada Kavya chilume and more.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
