Jaivardhan Lakhera
Acting
Biography
Jaivardhan Lakhera is an actor and performance scholar from Delhi. Jaivardhan holds a Master's degree in Performance Studies from Ambedkar University, (class of 2023), where he studied under Prof. Anuradha Kapoor and Prof. Deepan Sivaraman. He has performed in numerous national and international theatre productions and represented India at the South Asia Youth Conference in Kathmandu in 2017. In films, he portrayed Vandit in My Hate Letter to Cycles and/or Self Harm, directed by Harsh Vardhan Kumar, which was selected for multiple film festivals across India, including the Darbhanga International Film Festival (2024) and the Mumbai International Film Festival, 2024 (MIFF). He also played the lead role in the film Notes on Something Called Hope, which was officially selected for the Women's International Film Festival of Nigeria (WIFFEN) and the Buenos Aires International Film Festival Channel (BUEIFF) in 2022. He has acted in over 15 stage productions, including The Just Assassins (2017), Mriga Trishna (2017), Fishes of Kamloops (2018), Kissagoi (2021), and "Ila-Arun" (2022-23). While at the University of Delhi, Jaivardhan was an active member of Shunya, the dramatics society of Ramjas College, and earned acclaim for his role in Talchhat (2019), a stage adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, which won numerous awards and was featured at the Old-World Theatre Festival in 2019 organised by Keval Arora. Lakhera's is performance piece To the Bones (2023) was staged at the International Festival of Theatre Schools (IFTS) in Kerala. His approach leans towards Michael Chekhov's psychophysical techniques, and he is currently dedicated to deepening his understanding of these methodologies and various systems in acting.
Known For
In an unnamed town in 2000s India, a barber and his son can regrow people’s hair in exchange for years from their lives. In a parallel realm rooted in Hindu cosmology, a divine barber and his apprentice tend to the Gods themselves. Barber of the Gods is a mytho-urban fable exploring the burden of legacy and the cost of miracles.
Barber of the Gods
Shaurya after being fed up with his environment, comes together with his crew to point out the elephant in the room. After suffering in a dysfunctional family for most of his life and realising its visceral impact on his mother (Madhu), he convinces her to act in a media project and tries to raise questions by masking the activity as an “actor’s exercise”. He creates a facade to heal the damage his family has faced due to the influence of societal norms and patriarchy in tandem. Shaurya’s father Naval lurks around to keep surveillance and that’s exactly what he's been set up for. Vandit & Shaurya ask Madhu to perform activities to create physical discomfort whenever she adheres to societal norms. The nature of this activity is questioned by the parents, especially Naval, as most of the questions point fingers at him. Due to this, his true character is brought to the forefront. Consequently, a confrontation breaks out and it leads to an uncanny incident.
My Hate Letter To Cycles and/or Self harm
In the midst of the 2nd wave of the pandemic in India, Sushant is shook by an actor's suicide. What follows is a dangerous and expanding blur between the 'self' and the 'other'.