Youngsters bring social issues to the centre at this theatre festival
It’s the first time our theatre group has been selected for this festival and it will help us to improve our production and grow creatively as well.
CHAYAN BHATIYA PARTICIPANT
Atelier’s ACT Festival, the annual theatre fest in the Capital, is back with its latest edition, and features the best of plays and performances from the campus. The festival aims at providing professional space to the youth, especially theatre societies and groups, and comprises of 12 stage and 15 street performances.
Shikha, a participating student from Miranda House, Delhi University, says, “We will be performing both our annual productions — stage and street — on February 24.
Our stage production, File2307, is a psychological drama, and our street production, Jal Bata Shunya, is an attempt to highlight the alarming water crisis. The goal is to deliver a good performance at prestigious venues and not win a competition or run from one venue to another.”
The-eight-day-long festival will travel to seven cities, showcasing best practices of Delhi campus theatre, encompassing a variety of themes.
Chayan Bhatiya, a student of the Netaji Subhas University of Technology, says, “We are performing our self-written production, Muktibodh, on February 25. It’s a tale that tries to highlight the relative meaning of salvation. It’s the first time our theatre group has been selected for this festival and it will help us to improve our production and grow creatively as well.”
This is the 12th year of the festival which has, over the years, seen tremendous growth. Gaurav Suri, festival manager, says, “From a threeday festival in 2007, it’s now a seven-city festival. In its 12th year, with all the constructive modifications, it has gotten bigger and better. This is the first ever time that the festival will be travelling to Jaipur and Pune, in addition to Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Mumbai. The growth of the festival is overwhelming, but when people say this is nothing more than a drama, we say, ‘Yeh drama nahi life hai’.”