Guwahati Theatre Fest to stage plays of Saurabh Shukla, Bharat Dabholkar, Ashvin Gidwani

Guwahati: Three nationally acclaimed plays by renowned directors Saurabh Shukla, Bharat Dabholkar and Ashvin Gidwani will be staged here during the Sixth Guwahati Theatre Festival from September 8, organisers said on Thursday.

The plays to be staged in the three-day festival are 'Barff', directed by Saurabh Shukla, 'The Scent of a Man' by Ashvin Gidwani and 'Blame it on Yashraj' by Bharat Dabholkar.

The three-day festival this year has a diverse collection of contemporary plays, Chief Executive Officer of the English weekly 'GPLus', the organisers of the festival, Sidharth Bedi Varma told PTI.

A workshop will also be organised during the festival for school students.

The festival will open with the highly acclaimed thriller 'Barff', set over one snowy night in an abandoned village in Kashmir, and will feature Saurabh Shukla, Sunil Palwal and Aanchal Chauhan.

'The Scent of a Man' will be staged on the second day. Set in present-day Mumbai, the play is a comedy on lies and infidelity and it features Ashwin Mushran, Bhavna Pani, Suchitra Pillai and Manyuu Doshi.

‘Blame It on Yashraj', will be staged on the final day, and is also a Comedy mounted with fast-changing video walls as backdrops where every scene and every emotion is enhanced with popular Bollywood music. This play has an ensemble cast of 27 members including Anant Mahadevan and Jayati Bhatia, Bedi said.

“The sixth edition of the Festival is significant as plays that pack a lot of drama will be staged. The response by the people of the city has been great, but we can only hope that it gets bigger this time”, he said.

Festival Advisor Nandinee Kalita told PTI that the Guwahati Theatre Festival is now recognized at the national level among theatre culture and festival fraternity.

A three-day workshop will be conducted by visiting artistes such as Saurabh Shukla, Anant Mahadevan, Bharat Dabholkar among others, she said.

''This will enable the youth of the state to gain exposure and lessons in various aspects of performing arts from such stalwarts'', she said.

The Festival also honours personalities with lifetime achievement awards and the jury is finalising the selection of this year's winner which will be presented on the last day of the festival.

The Guwahati Theatre Festival started in the year 2016 with an objective to bring in nationally and internationally acclaimed plays to theatre enthusiasts of the region and has become a landmark event in the cultural landscape of the region.

The Festival completed five editions where stalwarts like Shabana Azmi, Amol Palekar, Rajat Kapoor, Lilette Dubey, Vinay Pathak, Saurabh Shukla, Kalki Koechlin, Rajit Kapoor, Atul Kumar had performed.