Nandikar’s 28th National Theater Festival Inaugurated - Celebrating Indian and International Stage Productions

The Director-President Rudraprasad Sengupta was particularly positive about the city’s response to the collection of plays boasting of immortal plays by Tagore, Shakespeare, Bhisham Sahni, Manoj Mitra, to name a few. In fact, he went a step further in saying that the festival can pull crowd on its own by virtue of its well deserved brand name, developed through years of dedicated service to the stage and theater. Veteran actor Soumitra Chaterjee graced the inauguration ceremony of the festival, also featuring exhibitions on Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda.
During these ten days the city will be gifted with a potpourri of theater productions by National School of Drama Repertory Company, Delhi, National School of Drama TIE Company, Delhi, regional troupes and quite a few plays by Nandikar itself. While Assam, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha will be represented by a single play, there’ll be two plays from Maharashtra, a few from West Bengal and one from Dhaka, Bangladesh
With a record of hosting theater groups and production houses of repute throughout its journey of 27 years, Nandikar’s annual carnival hasn’t failed to bring in the best in business. Since the inaugural edition in 1984, the festival has been graced by the presence of stalwarts like Sombhu Mitra, Vijaya Mehta, Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad.
Nandikar’s Inaugural play for its 28th year, ‘Devi Sarpamasta’, was penned by Manoj Mitra in the year 1995. He is a well known figure in the Bangla theater circle with a good 50 years of experience in the industry and more than 100 plays to his credit. Though set in a particular time and place, the play’s theme has a universal feel to it. The narrative (revolves around exploitation of the under-privileged class, especially tribals), is characterized by a lyrical quality, more profound in the musical compositions regularly adorning the play.