Reach-out Theatre Fest from February 2 to 7

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘Reach-out festival,’ organised as part of the International Theatre Festival of Kerala held in Thrissur, would be held for the first time in the capital. From February 2 to 7, the festival will be held at Karthika Thirunal theatre, where plays from Kolkata, Mumbai and even Jodhpur would be staged every day at 6.30 pm.  It is the Information and Public Relations Department and the Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi that are getting together to host the reach-out fest.   The fest would be kicked off with the play ‘Malavikagnimitram’ by Kavalam Narayana Panicker. The Indian Ensemble Group in Bangalore would present the play ‘Afterlife of Birds’ on the second day. Kuldeep Kothari’s ‘Manganiar Concert’ will be staged by Rupayan Sansthan, Jodhpur, in Rajastani folk language on the third day, February 4.  ‘The Interview’, a play by Akarsh Khurana produced by Akvarious Productions, Mumbai, would be staged the next day. The play will be in English. In Tamil, Kattiyakkari group would present ‘Molagapodi’, a play by Srijith Sundaram. A play in Hindi by Usha Ganguly -  ‘Chandalika’ - would be presented by Rankakarmee, Kolkata. The reach-out fest is being held in Kozhikode also.  ‘The Afterlife of Birds’ is a play based on the true stories of people fighting wars against India and Sri Lanka. The play revolves around the subjectivity of war.  The play ‘Interview’ was India’s official selection for ‘Hot INK at the Lark’ in New York, 2011. Akarsh Khurana, the man behind the play, has produced over 30 plays in the last ten years.  The Kattiyakkari come as story tellers, a voice of the oppressed trumpeting liberation with theatre as a tool. The short story of ‘Baama’, which is being staged at the fest, portrays the social hierarchy of gender, caste and class.   The Manganiars consider themselves descendants of the Rajputs and are known as highly-skilled folk musicians of the Thar desert. Their songs are passed from generation to generation as a form of oral history of the desert.   Rupayan Sansthan was established in 1960 by founder director the late Komal Kothari (folklorist) and his friend Padma Shree Vijaydan Detha (folk story-teller) with the idea of compiling the rich Rajastani folk songs.   Indian Ensemble is a multi-lingual theatre company based in Bangalore which has a theatre education and research wing, through which it has formed a repertory and provides free theatre education to the social NGOs.