Shilpee Europe Tour
Last Update: 17. Feb 2025
Overview
„Lost and Found“ Poster 2025
What – Theatre from Nepal
‘Lost and Found’ is about gender inequality in Nepalese culture, which is still very patriarchal. Nepalese women are not recognised as citizens without proof of a father. The play aims to draw attention to this issue and uses two storylines: a modern and a mythological one, which reinterprets the legend of Buddha Gautama in terms of gender.
About the production
The play will be performed in a theatre or indoor venue. It will feature modern lighting, set design, props, sound design, and costumes. The production will require high-quality multimedia projections, and there will be English subtitles in the play. We will bring most of the set and props with us during the travel.
About the Story
Bhumi is a 25 years old tourist guide. She is a single mother raised child. She had many difficulties with government bureaucracy. Because she doesn't have citizenship. She loves her mother.
Sagar is a 48 years old tourist. He lives in Canada with his wife and two daughters. He is having a big conflict with his wife. So, they are almost in a divorce situation. He thinks he needs peace. He wants to do meditation and he wants to understand Gautam Buddha, an enlightened guy.
Bhumi is the guide for Sagar. On the first morning they meet in a Hotel cafe. They go to Gautam Buddha's palace from where Gautam Buddha left for meditation. While Bhumi is telling the story of Gautam Buddha to Sagar, Sagar becomes Gautam Buddha and Bhumi becomes Yashodhara, wife of Gautam Buddha. Historically Gautam Buddha leaves his wife Yashodhara and 7 days born child Rahul. Bhumi and Sagar have a different perspective to see the history of Gautam Buddha and Yashodhara, because of their own life and present situation.
They talk about the history while they are in the touristic field. They talk about their personal life while they are in a hotel cafe. Bhumi has a multi personality disorder because of her stressful childhood. Sometimes she talks as her mother or as Yashodhara.
There are two waiters in a cafe. Every time they are different characters with the same dress. And they have their own personal funny and painful stories.
At the end when Bhumi has a multi personality disorder in high. Her mother Rajani comes in her body and voice. Sagar recognizes Rajani as his ex-girlfriend.
Workshops we can offer
We prefer to perform the play Lost and Found during the tour. We can offer more two things during the tour:
1. "The River" outdoor performance which is nonverbal play.
2. Workshop on "Theatre of the Oppressed" and "Body and Movement." We can conduct theatre workshops between the performances, and we can also share the journey of Shilpee Theatre as well as the situation of Nepali theatre during the workshop.
Forum Theatre in West Nepal | 2024
Why - The intention
The performance of a Nepalese theatre play in Germany offers a unique opportunity for artistic and cultural exchange and to overcome national borders through art. For the Shilpee, theatre and activism are inseparably linked: Social injustices should be addressed through art and a rethink should take place.
Intercultural exchange
While sharing the story of our society through theatre, there will be a profound intellectual and cultural exchange. This will greatly assist Shilpee Theatre and us artists in expanding and flourishing. Through this exchange of art and stories via theatre, we will not only understand the differences, beauty, and difficulties among people living in different geographies but also discover our commonalities. This will help us foster equality and brotherhood as global citizens.
Learning from each other
We, Shilpee Theatre team are fully engaged in theatre, but in our country, formal education in theatre is absent. Some of our artists have gone abroad to receive theatre education and returned, and now they are fully dedicated to working at Shilpee Theatre. We want to refine and elevate our work. We aim to enrich the craft of theatre and the way stories are told. For this, theatre festivals and theatre tours will teach us a lot. Our folk tales and cultural theatre are rich, but we don’t have long history of Modern Theatre. The modern theatre in Europe is highly developed. We can learn a great deal from countries like Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Therefore, we wish to travel to these countries. Along with the theatre journey, we will understand their lives and societies. We will learn a lot from their artists.
Acro-Theatre | Director: Pabitra Khadka
When & Where - The schedule
The Shilpee is currently planning to be on tour in Germany in July. The following tour schedule is still in development and not finalised.
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Beginning of July (until 21.07.)
Flight from Kathmandu to Frankfurt
Freiburg
Stuttgart
Mainz -
End of July
International Theatrefestival Sommerwerft in Frankfurt (22.-27.07.)
Copenhagen (29.07.) -
Beginning of August
Aarhus (02./03.08.)
Gothenburg (05./06.08.)
Stockholm (09./10.08.)
Flight from Stockholm to Kathmandu
Philipp Neuweiler visits the Shilpee Ensemble | Oct 2024
Who - The Shilpee Ensemble
Shilpee Theatre wants to amuse the audiences with its play addressing social relevance and human concern. Our main purpose is to serve theater with new storytelling methods and ideas. We mainly do three different approaches in theater. We perform in Black Box theater. We have a theater house with 180 seats where we will perform regularly with our own production along with a few guest performances.
Director and author
I am Ghimire Yubaraj, the artistic director of Shilpee Theatre. I have been in theatre for 25 years and have worked with this company for the last 18 years. Essentially, we perform for Nepali audiences and frequently travel both within the country and abroad (for example theatre festivals in south Asia).
I studied theatre in Copenhagen and traveled individually across Europe with the theatre few times. This time, I dream of bringing my group to some parts of Europe with our new play, “Lost and Found.”
The Shilpee
Shilpee Theatre was established in 2007. Since then, we are busy with various theatrical activities. We built a black box theater in 2013 in the middle of Kathmandu City. Now most of the activities and ideas are developed in the theater house, where we 17 people are working full-time. Now 9 artists live in the theater hostel. We run a small café where the theater audiences get service before and after the play.
We make various outdoor and indoor theater tours. When we make an outdoor theater, we call it ‘borderless theater'. If you translate it into Nepali, it is ‘MUKTARANGAMANCH’. We go to the different cities and remote villages across the country.
And the third is that we run theater workshops nationally and internationally. We deal with the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ method and ‘Physical Theatre’. We have participated in several international theater festivals with our plays and workshops.
Recently Shilpee theatre is building another theatre center in the southern eastern part of Nepal. Shilpee has got a small piece of land from the local government. We have built an amphitheatre with 500 audiences capacity. And now we are building a black box theatre with 200 seat capacity.
We are 12 artists and 5 administrative members (two people in the café and three people in the theater office) in the team. Most of the artists have been involved in the team for many years. We are trying to make a living from theater with a minimum living standard. There is no support for the theater by the government. We try to make our living by various theatrical activities.
