It's quite fitting that if you place a call to thespian Raell Padamsee right now, you'll find that her caller tune is set to Audrey Hepburn singing All I Want is a Room Somewhere, the classic track from My Fair Lady. That's because her next production involves a theatrical staging of the iconic 1964 movie. Veteran director Karla Singh is helming the play, while the actors include noted names like Shahriyar Atai and Danesh Irani. But as is characteristic of Padamsee, the cast also features around 35 lesser-privileged children, selected from city-based NGOs from places like Malad and Worli that ACE, her theatre group, works with.

The idea, Padamsee says, is to use theatre as a tool to chisel life skills that the kids can later employ in whatever vocation they choose. She tells us, "We started a foundation called CREATE in 2002 and our maxim is, 'Equal opportunity for all'. So, for the longest time, we have involved such kids in all our big productions. We make sure that everybody gets exactly the same kind of training, [access to] design elements, etc. It's also important for the audience to understand that this is something that's possible, so that they in turn feel that they can do similar things in their own capacity, because everything is very marginalised in our society, unfortunately."