House lights down · Season 2026–27
Eighty-four seats. No bad one.
A black-box theatre in Chandigarh where the farthest seat is seven rows from the actors. Eight new productions this season, in Hindi, Punjabi and English, each one built for a room this small.
PROLOGUE The company · Who we are
PROGRAMME NOTE Read before the lights go down.
Saanjh Repertory is a resident company of fourteen actors, two writers and one very tired stage manager, working out of a converted printing press in Sector 10, Chandigarh. We opened in 2019 with borrowed lights and forty folding chairs.
Saanjh means dusk, and it also means something shared. We make new plays for a room where nobody can hide, the actors least of all. Every production is new writing or newly devised, and every Thursday is pay what you can.
Eight productions between November and April. Doors open forty minutes before curtain, latecomers are seated at the first blackout, and the bar stays open after every show.
ACT I The season · What is on
REPERTOIRE All shows run without interval unless marked. Running times include applause.
Three sisters, one kettle, and the will their mother never signed. A chamber comedy that turns at the second cup.
One actor, one empty chair, and forty years of a marriage told to whoever is not sitting in it.
A cloth merchant counts his debts while the street outside floods. A family drama kept in double entry.
The band is booked, the horse has arrived, and nobody can find Vikram. A farce in one long night.
Devised with twelve tenants of one building: every key they have ever lost, and what it used to open.
Two strangers, the last two seats, and five hours of road. A two-hander that never leaves the bus.
A man sells lamps in a plaza that has just been fitted with streetlights. A fable for a planned city.
Five short plays by five new writers, each written to start after ten at night.
ACT II Box office · Choose your seats
SEATING PLAN Up to eight seats per booking. Rows A and B are closest and cost a little more.
ACT III The house · In numbers
HOUSE REPORT How the season is selling, who came last year, and where a ticket goes.
ACT IV Press and honours · The bows
HONOURS LIST Kept by the stage manager, who does not exaggerate.
Monsoon Ledger · the full company of nine
Doaba Playwrights' Circle · judged blind
The Lamp Seller of Sector 17 · Tricity Stage Review readers' poll
Sold out in eleven of them · two seats and a window fit in one van
Sixty places a year, free for anyone aged 14 to 18
Roughly four hundred cups of tea poured on stage
Forty folding chairs, six borrowed lamps, one power cut
ACT V Workshops · Come and make something
REHEARSAL ROOM Taught by the people you saw on stage last night. No experience needed for any of them.
Breath, pace and how to be heard in the back row without shouting. Teachers, lawyers and one auctioneer have taken it so far.
STARTS 22 NOVWrite a twenty-minute play for two actors and no set. The best five are staged in Small Hours at the end of the season.
STARTS 3 DECLearn the house rig, plot a scene and run your own cues from the desk. You leave able to light a college production properly.
17 – 18 JANSixty young people make one full production a year and perform it on the main stage in April. Paid for by the pay-what-you-can fund.
AUDITIONS 9 NOVRehearsals, readings and recordings · weekday mornings · rig and technician included
ACT VI Visit · The stage door
STAGE DOOR Group bookings, school visits, access needs and scripts you would like us to read.