On August 5, the curtains go up on The MetroPlus Theatre Festival, a 11-day extravaganza, featuring theatre groups from Chennai and elsewhere. Nine plays in all will be staged at the festival, the first national event of its kind to be organised in the city.

In the recent past, English theatre has been attracting a larger audience. It is also an audience that has become more critical and demanding. By organising a festival of this nature, we hope that the profile of English theatre will be raised in Chennai.

Of the performances, five are being performed by theatre groups from Chennai and four by those from other parts of the country (Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi).

The outstation theatre groups include Ranga Shankara, which will perform Girish Karnad's "A Heap of Broken Images" for the first time outside Bangalore.

On show is also Lilette Dubey's Homespun Theatre Company, which will perform Mahesh Dattani's "Dance Like A Man" — an old favourite with theatre-goers. The other Mumbai group, Atul Kumar's The Company Theatre, will stage "Creeps" and New Delhi's Yatrik, will stage its longest-running and most popular play, Gurcharan Das' "9 Jakhoo Hill". The Chennai groups participating are The Madras Players, Stagefright, Magic Lantern, Boardwalkers and Evam, who are our logistics partner for the event.

Today, MetroPlus previews three plays, which will be staged on August 5, 6 and 7. It also runs details about a two-day workshop that will be conducted for theatre enthusiasts on August 8 and 9.

The plays previewed in this special two-page section devoted to the festival are "A Heap of Broken Images", "Creeps", "Fragments of the Bell Jar" and "The Zoo Story." The other six plays will be featured in tomorrow's MetroPlus.