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Press Release

“Create your own experience and build your own path rather than following someone else’s.”- Pankaj Kapur at Director’s meets of 18^th Bharat Rang Mahotsav

“Theatre is poor man’s weapon” – Jayant Pawar

New Delhi, 6^th February 2016: The sixth day of Bharat Rang Mahotsav had a tremendous start with “Meet the Directors” interaction amongst the directors and the audience. The play productions that were presented yesterday were Rajrakto, Chitrapata, Dopehri and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Directors of these presentations were Debashish Dutta, Manjunath L.Badiger, Pankaj Kapur & Deepan Sivaraman.

Pankaj Kapur is an eminent actor of television serials, Bollywood and has been a veteran in theatre world. He has established a theatre society called “Theatron” in Mumbai. A graduate from National School of Drama himself, Pankaj Kapur has been associated with Bharat Rang Mahotsav. 

Talking about his performance yesterday, Pankaj Kapur said, “My aim towards the production of Dopehri was to realise if I still can perform theatre on stage or not. Also, I wanted to know if my work has reached the audience and how they respond to it.”

It is noteworthy that on public demand Pankaj Kapur had to do an additional show of Dopehri.

 Answering to a question why he chose a new style of direction in his production, Mr Kapur said,“ Whatever that is in the league, I prefer to do something dissimilar of it. “Dopehri” is not an ordinary production. It is a dramatic narration. So what if it doesn’t have the generally set aspects of theatre, that doesn’t declare it a non-theatrical production.” 

Emphasising on the young theatre aspirants in the audience he mentioned, “ The method which has been going on since long time, if only that will be followed without any development or changes, then one day it will lead to the end of theatre. We need to understand why a certain performance has been done in a certain way rather than questioning why it hasn’t been done in the pre conceived settings of our mind.”

Director Deepak Sivaram mentioned, “Theatre is a hybrid form. It is not based on literature alone. It includes the importance of space, lighting, dance, music as well.”

The latest addition to Bharat Rang Mahotsav, “Emerging Trends” –a three day seminar begins from today with livewire energetic discussions on the emerging trends in field of Playwright. The speakers of session were well-known theatre playwrights -Asif Ali Haider Khan, Bratya Basu, Jayant Pawar and Manav Kaul. 

The speakers presented their own experiences of discovering a playwright in themselves and the environmental factors that contributed in the writings. The importance of Indian theatre and playwrights and its globalisation was elaborately brought out in front of audiences. Playwright Bratya Basu stated, “The language of a playwright is always regional. It is always spoken in another language for films.” 

Elaborating on the origin of playwrights and their globalisation, eminent Marathi Playwright Jayant Pawar mentioned, “Just like a tree, the roots of our playwriting are deep in our community and it needs to be strong, otherwise theatre may not survive.”