The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (INGCA) is a veritable living theatre with simultaneous performances in several open air and covered spaces all day long.

The second and third-year students of the National School of Drama showed their paces over the past week in two very different productions.

The script of Dr C.D. Sidhu’s 35th play did not disappoint. The play, Suthra Gaunda Riha, is like his earlier plays also set in the Doaba region of Punjab, known for the sweetness of its speech, and concerns a poor rural village family. Dr Sidhu is an iconic figure in Delhi theatre. He has single-handedly placed Punjab drama on the

WATCHING RAMESH Manchanda and to a lesser extent Anurag Arora was to see actors snatch a performance out of thin air.

Bharangam, NSD’s international theatre festival, was perhaps the first in its history of 13 years that did not throw up a single outstanding play.

Eric Vigner is a native of Rennes in Brittany, France, where he was born and brought up in a worker’s family.

The National School of Drama’s 13th Bharat Rang Mahotsava was inaugurated on January 7 with a performance of Habib Tanvir’s classic play Charan Das Chor in an Assamese version presented by Ba and directed by Anup Hazarika. The adaptation in Assam’s traditional and folk forms was interesting and the musical interludes well enacted and sung, but the main characters resorted to loud acting, with slapstick taking centrestage and everyone, from the guru to the queen and the chor/thief, essaying similar movements.

In a tour de force of student theatre presented as a part of the Asia Pacific Bureau Drama School’s Meet, theatregoers, faculty, students and guests were treated to a dizzying array of theatre styles, substance, symbolism and superb acting. With the enthusiasm brought to this dramaturgic collective by students from China, Hong Kong,

Looking back, the last year has been a good year for theatre.

Looking back, the last year has been a good year for theatre.