Mumbai Theatre Utsav

Winter is not so chilly nowadays here in Mumbai. Infact its terribly hot in the afternoons. But things are gonna be different in some days...There's going to be a change in weather. The theatre season hits Mumbai this Jan on the13th and promises to last well upto the end of the month. So the folks who have theatre positive running in their veins are surely not gonna be bothered of this unexpectedly hot winter. At last a theatre fest happening in Mumbai apart from the Prithvi fest where with all due respect the tickets get sold out even before people come to know about the plays.

The Mumbai Theatre Utsav kick starts from Friday 13th Jan 06 at Ravindra Natya Mandir at Prabhadevi. I saw a lineup of the plays and they look awesome. Apart from the obviously good ones the plays to watch out for are: Mareez a Gujarati play about a poet called Mareez. (One of those rare gems from the otherwise thoroughly commercial and melodramatic Gujarati theatre scene.)

Deepak Rajyadhyaksha’s Sanman House. This Shyam Manohar play promises to entertain you with it witty but insightful humour. And what to say about Deepak? He is brilliant. He also happens to be my first director who made me act .

Jamini Pathak’s one man peormance of Mahadevbhai.

Noti Binodini a Bengali play.

Parnab Mukherjee remembers Ray. Hmmm…this sounds interesting.

And the students of the University Academy of Theatre perform the much acclaimed paly Zulwa by Chetan Datar.

If this ain’t enough.There is a superb line up of the folk gems too. Teejan Bai performs the Pandavani. From Gujrat they have bhavai, Natua naach from Bihar, nautanki from mathura and the works.

And last but not the least they have some wonderful workshops too by stalwarts like Salim Arif,Shfat Khan,Javed Siddique and Alyque Padamsee.

To know more about this fest go here.

Can’t wait to devour all of it. It s not always that the theatrewallahs in Mumbai get to experience so much under one roof.

A moronic faux pas

Having previously written about how hopelessly pretentious and stupid Star Screen Awards are, this time around they have managed to reach another milestone to showcase their stupidity. This.

I mean how can someone be so unabashedly moronic and ignorant? No I am not expecting every Tom, Dick and Hariya to know about Jahnu Barua, but then if you are an entity who is trying to take interest in his work by interviewing him or by nominating him for an award (as is in this case) then the least you can do is carry out a basic research on the man!

Inspite of living in an era of information onslaught such kind of instances I am sure are not unheard of. Now,now now...I had decided not to give too much of importance to such kinda sham awards but then..they went too far.