Mumbai-based theatre producer, director and actress, Raell Padamsee is the promoter-director of Ace Productions Pvt. Ltd (estb. 1987), a company engaged in the businesses of stage productions, sets design, events management and also promoter of ACE (Academy for Creative Expression) speech and drama workshops in schools. The daughter of star theatre personalities Alyque and the late Pearl Padamsee, Raell, a commerce graduate of Mumbai University, has been involved full-time with theatre and Ace Productions for almost 25 years.
Newspeg. To celebrate Ace’s silver jubilee, the company is poised to launch its ACE speech and drama workshops nationally under the franchise model.
Direct speech. “We’ve been conducting ACE speech and drama workshops in 20 schools across Mumbai for over 15 years and the feedback received from parents, teachers and students themselves, is excellent. There’s growing awareness within parent and teacher communities that speech and dramatics training does wonders for children’s (English) language, elocution and self-expression skills. Now we are looking for partners who will be trained by us to deliver these personality building services to children across the country,” says Padamsee.
History. With both parents famous stage personalities, Padamsee took to the arclights like a duck to water and made her stage debut when she was 15. And carrying the legacy forward, she has matured into a producer, director and actress in her own right. In 1987 she promoted Ace Productions, which has produced and performed 25 theatre productions including Brecht’s Measures Taken, Girish Karnad’s Broken Images and Shakespeare’s Macbeth among others.
Future plans. With Ace Productions’ national reputation as perhaps India’s premier English language theatre company staging over 100 shows annually, and its events division servicing British Midland Airways, Aditya Birla Group, McKinsey & Co among others, Padamsee looks to the future with optimism. “There’s a growing market for high quality English language theatre in small-town India, and rising interest within the country’s private schools in our speech and self-expression work-shops which we are all set to roll out countrywide,” enthuses Padamsee who is well cast for her new role.
Rinky Marwaha (Mumbai)