The sixth edition of the Guwahati Theatre Festival will be held from September 8-10 and will feature some of the top names from the industry.
Organised by GPlus, the theatre fest is all set to enthrall the audience with the performance of three nationally acclaimed plays, featuring Saurabh Shukla, Ashwin Mushran, Suchitra Pillai, Anant Mahadevan and Bharat Dabholkar among many others.
The theatre festival, tickets for which are available at BookMyShow, is being organized at the Pragjyoti ITA Centre at Machkhowa in Guwahati.
This year, the festival has a diverse collection of contemporary plays portraying a wide array of emotions encapsulating guilt and innocence, human and family relationship, humour crime and thrill.
Guwahati Theatre Festival started in 2016 with an objective to bring in nationally and internationally acclaimed plays to theatre enthusiasts of the region and ever since has become a landmark event in the cultural landscape of the region. The festival completed five successful editions where stalwarts like Shabana Azmi, Amol Palekar, Rajat Kapoor, Lilette Dubey Vinay Pathak, Saurabh Shukla, Kalki Koechlin, Rajit Kapoor Atul Kumar enthralled the audience with excellent performances in the past.
The sixth edition, organized in association with The Assam Tribune and supported by Apollo Hospitals Guwahati, Indian Oil, Oil India Limited and Numaligarh Refinery Limited, will present three nationally acclaimed plays during the three days of the festival. The festival will open with the highly acclaimed ‘Barff’ written and directed by Saurabh Shukla. The play set on a snowy night in an abandoned village in Kashmir is a thriller which spans over one night. ‘Barff’ will feature Saurabh Shukla, Sunil Palwal and Aanchal Chauhan.
Directed by Ashvin Gidwani, ‘The Scent Of A Man’ is being staged on September 9. Set in the present-day Mumbai, the play is a riotous & uproarious comedy on lies and infidelity, pickled and flavoured with a generous dose of caustic repartees, sharp wit, and unbridled sarcasm. ‘The Scent Of A Man’ features Ashwin Mushran, Bhavna Pani, Suchitra Pillai and Manyuu Doshi.
On the finale day of the festival on September 10, ‘Blame It on Yashraj’ will be staged. Written and directed by Bharat Dabholkar and produced by Ashvin Gidwani Productions, ‘Blame It On Yashraj’ is a hilarious English comedy innovatively mounted with fast-changing video walls as backdrops where every scene and every emotion is enhanced with popular Bollywood music and move. It has an ensemble cast of 27 members including the very well-known Anant Mahadevan and Jayati Bhatia.
Speaking about the event, Sidharth Bedi Varma, CEO, G Plus said: “The 6th edition of the Guwahati Theatre Festival is significant because we are bringing back the excitement of the Guwahati Theatre Festival with plays that pack a lot of drama. I think it is an important element for the festival and its overall experience for the people of Guwahati. The response by the people the city has been great, but we can only hope that it gets bigger this time.”
Interacting with the media at Gauhati Press Club, festival advisor Nandinee Kalita said: “The Guwahati Theatre Festival is now recognized at the national level among theatre culture and festival fraternity. A three-day workshop and master class will be organized during the Guwahati Theatre Festival at ITA Machkhowa for school students. The workshop will be conducted by visiting artists such as Saurabh Shukla, Anant Mahadevan, Bharat Dabholkar, among others, who will aim the give these young minds an insight to the world of theatre. This will enable the youth of the state to gain exposure and lessons in various aspects of performing arts from such stalwarts.”
The Guwahati Theatre Festival will also honor personalities with exceptional contribution to theatre over a lifetime with the ‘Life In A Theatre’ award. The jury is undergoing process of selection and the lifetime achievement award will be presented on the final day of the festival.
