The world is a stage. We just take that very literally.

Ethiros started because of a bad review. Not of a play, of an evening.

Someone walked out of our first production in 2019, told us it was very good, and then said the thing that changed everything: "I liked it, but I didn't do anything." They'd sat in a chair for two hours watching four people be interesting at them.

So we tried something. We took the same cast and ran the same story as a murder mystery in a friend's flat in Bandra, where the audience had to actually work out what happened. Nineteen people came. It ran four hours over. Nobody left.

That's the whole company, really. We kept asking what happens if the audience isn't furniture, and the answer kept being: something better than a play.

Now we do all of it. Actual plays with actual seats, because sometimes a story needs you still and quiet. And murder mysteries in villas, treks that are also investigations, childhood games played by adults with alarming seriousness, dinners that stop being dinners, workshops that make you stand up.

Theatre can happen on stage. It can also happen at a dinner, on a trek, inside a game, at a wedding, in a company offsite. Anywhere people are willing to play along.

Most of them are. That surprised us more than anything.

What we hold to

• Nobody gets ambushed

  Participation is invited, never forced. Every format has a way to be in the room without being on the spot. The person who came reluctantly with a friend is the person we design for.

• The story has to be worth solving

  It would be easy to hand out clue sheets and call it immersive. We write these as actual plots, with actual motives, that hold up when a room of smart people attacks them.

• Funny is not the opposite of serious

  Our best work makes people laugh for forty minutes and then go quiet. We'd rather be entertaining and mean something than be important at you.

• Show up prepared

  Actors rehearsed, props real, timings kept, refunds honoured. The unpredictability is on stage. It is not in the logistics.