Waikato Times

By: Mike Mather

When the play Balloon Dog opens at Hamilton’s Clarence St Theatre in May, it will be a long-awaited theatrical homecoming for Alisha Jacob – and the flourishing of a long-held passion for acting.

The show is the latest production from the acclaimed Indian Ink theatre company, and the 23-year-old former Sacred Heart Girls’ College student takes a starring role alongside revered stage veteran Jacob Rajan.

Under the directorship of Indian Ink co-founder Justin Lewis, the play marks the professional acting debut for Jacob, who graduated from Toi Whakaari – New Zealand Drama School in 2023.

She is now based in Melbourne, where she is becoming firmly ensconced in that city’s vibrant arts scene. However, the opportunity to work on an Indian Ink production back in New Zealand could not be resisted and, on learning the part was available, she sent the company a self-taped video audition.

Jacob, who had been working a retail job in Melbourne at the time, was quickly contacted and asked if she could come to Auckland to audition in person – in two days’ time.

Luckily, her employers were understanding of the need to drop everything and chase the opportunity.

“It turned out to be the craziest experience, that took place over two days,” she says over the phone from Australia.

“On the first day it was just me, Jacob [Rajan, who plays her father in Balloon Dog] and Justin. We worked through some scenes, playing them in lots of different ways.

“For part of the audition I was wearing a massive pink fur coat with heels – just because – and improvising a lot of the time. At the end of it, it felt like I had run a marathon.”

Day two of the rehearsals was a very different experience “in that there were now about 25 people from Indian Ink all there in the room, with Jacob and myself doing the same thing. It was fun, but also really intense.

“They told me they would let me know within the week whether I had got the part – but they ended up calling me that afternoon to tell me I was in. I’ve been completely over the moon ever since – They are such a warm, wonderful group of people who have really opened their arms to me.”

Jacob said her character in Balloon Dog is a young woman “who befriends a lonely migrant worker – and everything unravels from that point”.

“The story asks the simple question ‘Would you open your door to a stranger?’ It explores themes of ‘othering’, and how communities automatically ‘other’ those who are not just like them.”

The play is an adaptation of Kabuliwala, a short story by Rabindranath Tagore – the first non-European Nobel laureate for literature – that swaps 1800s Calcutta for 21st century Auckland.

“I think audiences will really connect to it. I read the short story, and it honestly moved me to tears.”

Indian Ink would likely need little introduction for anyone even vaguely acquainted with theatre in New Zealand.

Now in its 29th year, the company has extensively toured Aotearoa and the world staging highly inventive productions that blend Western theatrical traditions with Eastern flavours, mixing live music, humour, pathos and compelling storytelling.

Indian Ink are frequent visitors to Hamilton – most recently in February 2025, when the production Guru of Chai was a highlight of the Hamilton Arts Festival.

Jacob – who was born in Hamilton in 2002 – and her family relocated to India when she was still very young, to look after an unwell grandmother. They returned to Hamilton when she was 11, and she attended St Joseph’s Catholic School in Fairfield, before heading on to Sacred Heart.

Her journey to the stage has, in some ways, been an unexpected one.

“In my last year at Sacred Heart my drama teacher, Zoe Fleetwood, blackmailed me in the nicest possible way to get me to audition for drama school.

“I had been walking down this path towards becoming a lawyer at the time, and I had taken drama classes simply as a means of having time away from the stresses of studying all the sciences and maths.”

Coincidentally, staff from Toi Whakaari had come to Hamilton on a recruitment drive, “and she told me in no uncertain terms ‘You should give this a crack’. It was just pure good fortune that they happened to come to Hamilton that one year.”

Jacob was by this time already well infected by the acting bug.

“My parents would probably argue I was born with that bug. It really came into fruition when I took part in the [inter-school competition] Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival, when we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

During her time in training, Jacob performed in several theatre shows, notably The Birthday Girl and Mimic Another. Other highlights included the short films Blue Lights and Flowers of Eventide, and Radio New Zealand’s Fake Baby.

More recently she worked on another short by Miryam Jacobi called Hire A Wife, opposite Dean O’Gorman.

Jacob said she had moved to Melbourne “on a whim” in April 2024 after graduating from drama school.

“I had closed the Wellington chapter of my life … Melbourne really suits my artistic soul. There’s always something going on.”

Following the New Zealand season of Balloon Dog, the production will head across the Tasman for a short season at the Sydney Opera House in late June.

“It feels surreal. I will be performing at the Sydney Opera House – and on my professional debut. I can’t quite believe it.”

From this point on, Jacob intends to “segue into the Australian performing arts industry … Aspirationally, I would love to get into the screen industry in Australia as well as the theatre scene in Melbourne.

“In the meantime I have been making my own short films and keeping active … I want the world to come and see me act.”