The Hindu : National : 16-day festival of north-east theatre

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Monday, Mar 24, 2008
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16-day festival of north-east theatre

Sushanta Talukdar

Guwahati: To reach out to those theatre talents in the northeast, who could not reach the National School of Drama (NSD), the country’s foremost theatre training institution based in Delhi will hold a 16-day-long theatre festival of the northeast in collaboration with the Directorate of Cultural Affairs, Government of Assam, beginning on March 26 here.

The fortnight-long festival — Poorvottar Natya Samaroah — will feature 28 plays and will include plays by eminent theatre directors of the north-east such as Ratan Thiyam, Kanhailal and Dulal Roy alongside works of younger directors and NSD products such as Baharul Islam and Rabijita Gogoi.

The festival will take off with a play titled “Nine hills One Valley,” to be directed by Ratan Thiyam.

The present festival was conceived to bring together the plays produced in a series of theatre workshops organised by the NSD in different parts of the north-east under its extension programme. Later, it was decided to include plays by senior theater directors of the region to give it the shape of a major festival.

NSD Registrar D.R. Sarin and Professors K.S. Rajendran and Sudhir Kulkarni told reporters that while most performances would be in different languages of the north-east such as Assamese, Manipuri, Mizo, Rabha, Garo, it would also feature one performance each in Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu and Hindi, which they said were expected to give the festival a variety in terms of production styles and texts drawn from a variety of sources.

The Director, Cultural Affairs, Assam, Swapnanil Barua said the State government has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs for setting up a Regional centre of the NSD within the current financial year.

Five RSDs

Mr Sarin said the NSD has proposed setting up five Regional School of Drama (RSDs) within the 11th Five year plan period and one of these proposed RSDs would be set up in the north-east.

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