In recognition for his contributions to Assamese theatre, veteran theatre personality Kulada Kumar Bhattacharjee was awarded the “Life in a Theatre” Award by the GPlus Guwahati Theatre Festival.
The festival, which was held from September 14-18 at the Pragjyoti ITA Centre, Machkhowa, Guwahati, honoured the veteran actor with a citation and a cheque of Rs 21,000. The award was given by Ashutosh Agnihotri, commissioner & secretary, Transport, and CEO, GMDA.
While receiving the award, actor Kulada Bhattacharjee said that he was happy to witness theatre being embraced by the city through the first Guwahati Theatre Festival. The veteran actor, who will be seen in the Assamese movie ‘Dikchow Banat Palaax‘ which releases on September 30, said that he was looking forward to seeing more plays being performed in Guwahati.
“It has been a moment of pride that we could use this platform of the theatre festival with thousands of theatre lovers from the city to honour Kulada Bhattacharjee with the award,” said an elated Sunit Jain, chairman at Guwahati Theatre Festival.
The 83-year old veteran has dedicated almost his entire life to theatre and has been relentlessly promoting the art since a very tender age. Apart from being involved in the Delhi theatre scenario, he has also trained and performed in Europe.
The Guwahati Theatre Festival concluded on Sunday with Rage Productions’ One On One, with scintillating performances from Rajit Kapur, Anu Menon, Neil Bhoopalam, Sumit Vyas, Vrajesh Hirjee and others. The festival also featured plays like Rajat Kapoor’s Hamlet The Clown Prince, Kalki Koechlin’s The Living Room, 2 To Tango 3 To Jive by Saurabh Shukla and The Truths of Womanhood – A monologue by Kalki Koechlin.
All the performances were followed by a talk-back session where the audience interacted with the cast and director of the respective plays. The first edition of the festival saw a turnout of over 5,000 people coming to enjoy the plays in a span of five days.
“It has been highly encouraging to see such a huge turnout each day, this being the first time that such an event was held in the city. We are already looking forward and planning for the next edition in 2017 and hope to make it even bigger, better and all-encompassing,” said Sunit Jain, publisher at GPlus and the festival chairman.
