15 May,2025 06:32 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Pic/Satej Shinde
Guests engage in conversation across balconies of their respective rooms at a Juhu townhouse.
Mahalaxmi-based restaurant PORT Kitchen and Bar and G5A Warehouse will host a series of intimate dinner club session, starting this Saturday. The first session will feature a multicourse seasonal menu along with a guided walkthrough by the chef. "Dinner service is an invitation to gather again - properly, meaningfully - in a city that rarely stops moving. Each session is more than just the meal. It's about where you are, who you're with, and the conversation that unfolds between courses. The idea is to create moments of intimacy in unexpected places, where food becomes a way in, not the final destination," Ishan Benegal, artistic director at G5A Warehouse and head chef of the restaurant shared with this diarist.
City-based naturalist Isaac Kehimkar's adventures with winged beauties will soon translate into the celluloid with Dutch filmmakers, Sem Jones and Dennis Van Ooijen's documentary, The Butterfly Man. "I was quite surprised when they [Jones and Ooijen] approached me for the film. It was lovely to see them take the initiative to shoot the documentary in Marathi," Kehimkar said. With shoots in Kehimkar's garden in Karjat, the Ovalekar Wadi Butterfly Garden in Thane and Sammilan Shetty's Butterfly Park in Belvai, Mangaluru, the film intends to spread awareness about the preservation of biodiversity. "After my garden was ready, we also invited students from Saraiwadi Primary School in Jambrung to visit the space and learn more about these insects," Kehimkar added. With the trailer scheduled to release in August, the filmmakers are planning to submit the documentary in film festivals as well. "We are looking to submit the documentary to different film festivals, including the All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF) in India," Jones shared with us over a call from Holland.
Watch your step if you're strolling in the lanes of Fort today, or you might just step into a theatre play. Postcards From Colaba, theatremaker Vikram Phukan's (below) unique travelling play based on the precinct's lesser known queer history will see its 65th live performance this evening. "The production is built on chance encounters and unwritten testimonies hidden in plain sight. The participants are always surprised by the stories we unearth. It makes you look at Colaba in a completely different light," Phukan told us. While this diarist had witnessed a previous staging in 2024, Phukan assured us that much like the city, the production has been evolving constantly. With a new sound design, the stories will now sound a tad better. Those willing to lend an ear can write to @vikithephu on Instagram to register.
This weekend, San Francisco-based theatremaker Nandita Dinesh (inset) will transform ordinary spaces into the stage and rewrite theatrical narratives in the workshop, Theatre Anywhere at 3ArtHouse in Khar. "This is my first workshop in Mumbai. The idea is to basically show people how they can create a performance literally anywhere. Early in my career I used to work only in formal spaces, which made me realise how limiting that was in terms of costs and possibilities. People usually do not think of performance in common spaces like kitchens or living rooms because that is what usually happens in films. For the workshop, I will be using the different rooms in the space to explore what kind of stories emerge from them," she concluded.
