First edition of Guwahati Theatre Festival brings a smile to people of northeast

A five-day Guwahati Theatre Festival recently brought popular Bollywood actors Rajat Kapoor, Kalki Koechlin and Saurabh Shukla to picturesque Assam.

Organised by GPlus, a leading English weekly of Guwahati, in collaboration with Ballantine's and Audi Guwahati, the theatrical festival showcased outstanding performances and provided quality entertainment to theatre lovers.

Anand Prakash Tiwari, Managing Director of the Assam State Transport Corporation, was the chief guest at the event held at the Pragjyoti ITA Centre in Machkhowa, Guwahati.

Dr. Asha Kuthari Choudhary, the director of the festival and a professor at the Guwahati University, said, " The idea of the festival is that we bring all these plays from outside to allow audiences in Guwahati to get a feel of how production works and what kind of innovation are taking place in the outside theatres which are not from Assam. Hopefully, in our next edition, god willing, we will probably get some players from abroad. And, that is our large scale plan."

The festival opened up with premium play Hamlet-The Clown Prince, directed by acclaimed Bollywood actor and director Rajat Kapoor.

Hamlet-The Clown Prince is a comedy take on the famous Shakespearean tragic play.

'The Living Room', '2 to Tango 3 to Jive', 'The Vagina Monologues', 'The Truth of Womanhood' and 'One on One' were other plays staged during the festival.

Excellent scripts and breathtaking performances from popular artistes like Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Neil Bhoopalam, Saurabh Shukla, Kalki Koechlin, Rajit Kapoor and Achint Kaur left the audiences awestruck who gave performers a huge standing ovation.

Kalki Koechlin, a Bollywood actor and director, said, "I think more such festivals should be organised. A lot of theatre festivals have been happening nowadays. The youth definitely has an interest in theatre, but the infrastructure is not adequate at the moment. There are not enough theatres which makes it difficult to showcase plays. But I think that people's interest is growing in theatre."

The festival was also aimed at recognising and encouraging new talent, apart from creating a new generation of theatre goers.