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World Theatre Day celebrated

Dilip Guha

Bengal Association, Delhi, a premier organisation to promote Bengali art, culture, literature, sports, and other various aspects of Bengali culture, since 1958, organized a theatre festival to celebrate World Theatre Day on Sunday 2nd of April,2023.

World Theatre Day (WTD) was initiated by the International Theatre Institute ( ITI ) in 1962, to promote theatre, being one of the oldest performing arts, and is celebrated all over the World on 27th March.

Eighteen Bengali theatre groups were gathered at the Muktadhara Auditorium at Capital to celebrate the amazing works of some of the brilliantly-talented playwrights. Many leading theatre personalities attended this prestigious festival on Sunday and witnessed the house-full gathering till the end of the event.  A bouquet of Bengali plays in a variety of genres was presented. Significant topics, such as women’s issues, the lives of the middle class, old-age persons, and different social relationships, to name a few, were portrayed. The plays dabbled in diverse genres, such as satire, musicals, comedy, thriller suspense, and romance.

Talking to this reporter, Shri Prodip Ganguly, the General Secretary of Bengal Association informed that this year’s festival succeeded in bringing together all these theatre groups of Delhi-NCR and it depicted the traditional richness of Bengal’s literature, art and culture came to the fore in a very brief time slot of 20 minutes for each of the 18 Micro-plays. Each production was invariably extremely neat, and clearly articulated, to highlight abstract ideas of the inner meaning of the story enacted.

Speaking about the present scenario of the Bengali Theatre of Delhi he said that the successes of this festival shows that the Bengali theatre in Delhi is fast gaining its luster, charm, and popularity but it is disappointing to note the auditorium halls are either empty or occupied by family, friends, and well-wishers of the patrons throughout the year. We need to motivate youngsters by explaining importance to theatre as it teaches one to work as a team, to lead a group and it helps an individual to grow as a human being who respects other’s feeling.

Noted theatre practitioner Biswajit Sinha of Navapalli Natya Sanstha, a leading amateur Bengali theatre group in the capital, affirms that “Bengali theatre of Delhi is as good as any other language theatre in the country, but due to scarcity of sufficient funds, lack of institutional support, paucity of manpower, scarcity of theatre halls at reasonable rates, shrinking rehearsal spaces, dearth of theatre technicians and the crooked Amusement Act and above all lack of original scripts, it is lagging behind,” On the occasion Navapalli Natya Sanstha (NNS),  brought to stage “Tinkari Dasi- Lady Macbeth

In order to make our next generation aware of Bengali literature and to engage them in cultural activities, this time the school girls of Karolbagh Bangiya Sangsad staged a short drama “Hingsuti”  and the BIKALPA group presented  “Juta Aabishkar” by all child artist. Both the shows were stoled by well-groomed child actors with unimaginable talent and unlimited fun.

The participated groups were BIKALPA-,Navapalli Natya Sangstha, Amra Kajon, C R Park Kali Mandir Society, Bhushan Amateurs, Theatre Platform, Drama Society Akriti,  C R Park Bangiyo Samaj, Sreejani, Punoscho, Horizons, Antaranga, Karol Bagh Bangiyo Samsad, Theatre forum, Dakhinayan Natyo Gosthi, Nirbak Acting Academy, Sapno Ekhan and Natyarango.

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