Kaizaad Kotwal

Biography:

Kaizaad Kotwal is a multifaceted Indian producer, director, actor, writer, and designer with a notable career spanning over 200 theater and film productions. He is recognized for his work on the Indian adaptation of The Vagina Monologues. Kotwal won an Emmy Award for Art Direction in 1996 and co-owns Poor-Box Productions with his mother, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal.

The company, which began in Ohio in 1996, expanded to India in 1999, where they launched their production of Shirley Valentine and subsequently introduced The Vagina Monologues to Indian audiences in 2003. Kotwal and Mody-Kotwal also founded the Make-A-Difference Foundation in 2008 to support women’s empowerment.

In 2014, Kotwal participated in the Women of India Leadership Summit in New Delhi. He gave a TED talk titled “Art and the Accidental Activist” in December 2018 and, in 2019, received the Karmaveer Puruskar Mahartna award for his activism.

Kotwal is a distinguished academic, holding degrees from Wabash College, Ohio State University, where he completed a Master’s in feminist and post-colonial literature, and a doctorate in new media and technology in art, film, and theatre. He currently teaches at Ohio State University, where he was honored with the Griffin Society Award for Best Professor in 2008 and recognized as one of Ohio’s top professors in 2007.