Balasree Viswanathan

You've made a space that I'm happy to belong to. You've helped me explore artistry for the first time in my life.

You've helped me realise that being dependable, present, listening and responding to friends, family and team members is far more important than trying to be clever and witty and intelligent.

Sankarshan S Baliga

Learning from Bala and watching her over the past few months, I am inspired to apply Yes-And in my life! When that has been possible, I am present with so much more ease and confidence.

Anubha Jaswal

My fear of self-expressions is going down, I'm becoming more confident in embracing who I am and the practice of acting through the body and not just the mind is slowly becoming integrated which helps me with scenes a lot better. I see you making some powerful choices on stage which in return inspire me to choose something powerful. ❤️

Samridhi Sukhani

I got the pleasure to work with Bala while preparing for our show at Hongkong improv festival. She really helped me understand what kind of scenes and stories I like, what bold choices really mean and how to make those choices mine. She never told me "In a scene about xyz, you can do a,b,c". She always asked me "what was in your head and why didn't you go boldly with the choice you had. The audience wants to see that"

It applies in improv, but a lot of can be seen in day to day life. If you're always confused between multiple choices you'll never put your strongest foot forward for any. And seeing you struggle and tiptoeing between choices is not fun for people around you and never for you.

Vaibhav

Being open to experiences. Being comfortable in my own skin. To embrace the weird and own it. To understand that there are other ways outside my own little bubble, and in no way are they any lesser than mine.

Saurav

One of the very first things you taught me (in my second ever session with you)- "Don't try to be interesting, be interested" has stuck with me since. You've made me think about how to be more present in my body, get out of my own head and the importance of having fun on stage as opposed to trying to figure all of it out or "getting it right".

When I first met you, I had spent many years being told both explicitly and implicitly that a woman who is assertive and gregarious is too much. Watching you be open with your opinions and not making yourself small, made me feel very inspired and more confident.

Your support and encouragement and the opportunities you've provided me through ImprovLore has made me fall in love with improv. It's given me the motivation to pursue this for a long time. It's given me the dream of being able to go teach sometime in the future. You are the blueprint :)

Keerthana Srikanth