Pooja Mohanraj

Hailing from Kerala, Pooja is an actor, director, translator, voice artist and theatre educator. Her theatre journey started at age 10 as a member of the children’s theatre wing, Lokadharmi. Prior to ITI, she trained with G. Venu, David Zinder and Chandradasan, and attended workshops by Richard Schechner and Alex Pinder.

Pooja has worked with acclaimed directors such as Chandradasan, Kumara Varma and Neel Chaudhuri. Her major productions include Egle and Cleopatra (a solo play), Andorra and Balcony. She directed her first play, Sorry Dad but I Have To, for the Collegiate Theatre Festival for New German Writing by Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller in New Delhi. She has collaborated on The Bowl Project with multidisciplinary artists from Korea and The Eleven Project with French artists, and has also been a facilitator for theatre-in-education programmes for schools in India. In Singapore, she has performed in Pathey Nimidam, a Tamil theatre festival by Ravindran Drama Group. Pooja holds a Masters in Theatre Arts from the School of Drama and Fine Arts, Thrissur.

Pooja hopes to create her own theatre projects, get involved in collaborative work, and work towards using theatre as a tool for social change through her new arts and cultural organisation, Talir.

She made her film debut in a Malayalam film One (Ichais Productions) and Cold Case (Amazon Video Prime) in 2021. Pooja is currently working on Freedom Fight സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യ സമരം, a new film by Mankind Cinemas and Symmetry Cinemas. 

Read her Q&A here 

Recent works: 
1. Facilitator, A Workshop on Acting on Camera (2021; Thrissur, Ernakulam)
2. Facilitator, Acting workshop on psychophysical approaches to acting for actors and non-actors (2021; Trivandrum)
3. Collaborator, Marks (2021, School of Drama and Fine Arts; Thissur)
4. Actor, Cold Case (film) (2021, Amazon Video Prime)
5. Facilitator, ATTUNE: Introduction to Actor's Body-Mind (4–day workshop) (2021, Online) 
6. Facilitator, Online theatre workshop, Women's Theatre Collective (2021; Online)
7. Actor, One (film) (2021) 
8. Actor, Nothing (2021, International Conference on Gender Equality 2021) 
9. Facilitator, Online theatre workshop (2021, Women's Theatre Collective)

Last updated: 19 January 2022