Growing up in Gujarat, actor and theatre maker Deshik Vansadia attended a Gujarati medium school, and made sure to learn just enough 
English to clear his examinations. “As things would go, I ended up at Stella Adler’s Institute in Los Angeles. They gave me a speech by Edmund from King Lear for an exercise. I could not make sense of it,” the 37-year old laughs. The learnings from this experience, and a discovery of love for the bard, shape his upcoming 
Shakespeare Foundation Workshop in the city.

The workshop goes beyond just acting, he points out. Graduating from Adler’s, and later working in Shakespeare productions in Los Angeles, sparked a love for the bard that led Vansadia to found the Shakespeare Company of India on his return in 2019. “I was working in theatre [in India], but I missed the language and the poetry. When I decided to start the venture, I remember theatre veteran Sunil Shanbag warning me that it won’t be easy,” he recalls. Since then, the director has gone on to stage productions of The Taming of The Shrew at Prithvi Theatre, as well as conduct readings of Shakespearean sonnets across Delhi 
and Mumbai.