On Sunday, 17th December 2006 the annual youth theatre festival Thespo organized by ‘Theatre Group’ came to an end. The awards’ night as usual followed the last play of the festival. This year the plays were judged by actor-directors, Jaimini Pathak and Atul Kumar. Theatre and PR person Dolly Thakore also judged the event. Following are the names of the young people who emerged as winners in this festival:

Best Supporting Actress

Niharika Negi
Play: ENDS AND BEGINNINGS (English)

Niharika is a student of St. Xaviers' College. She is in her second year, BMM and has worked with Divya Palat, an actor, model and a workshop conductor.

Best Supporting Actor

Siddharth Kumar
Play: ENDS AND BEGINNINGS

Siddharth is an artist and an actor. He is a student of JJ College and is doing his major in Commercial Art. He says he will graduate next year, if a miracle occurs! He has worked with Atul Kumar’s The Company Theatre, with Rehaan Engineer’s The Industrial Theatre Company, with Quasar Thakore Padamsee’s QTP and with others in Mumbai.

Best Actress

Preeti Rajwade
Play: BABY (Marathi)

Preeti Rajwade completed her B.Com in 2001. She has trained as a classical singer and is working for an event management company called ‘Aditya’. She has acted in over 20 plays at the amateur level and has participated in several competitions. Besides Marathi play competitions she has also participated in Urdu play competitions. She has worked on the professional Marathi stage and can be credited for completing over a 1000 shows of a very popular Marathi play called VATRAT MELE (Director: Liladhar Kambli). She played the lead in a play called EK TARFI PREM and completed all 50 shows of the play. She also works in Marathi teleserials.

Best Actor

Warren D’Sylva
Play: ENDS AND BEGINNINGS

Warren has worked with Carl Mendes and is a singer and an actor. He has a day job in an event management company and has passed out of St. Xaviers' in 2005, majoring in English Literature.

Best Production Design

Bijoy Idicheriah & Team.
Bijoy too passed out of St. Xaviers' and has a day job. He is also a graduate of the Xaviers’ Institute of Communication (XIC) and has majored in Journalism.

Edisil Coutinho (Lights)
Edsil is a student of St. Xaviers'. He is in his second year BA.

Priyanshi Saxena (Production team)
Priyanshi is a student of St. Xaviers'. She is in her second year, BMM. She too has worked with Divya Palat.

Ryan Fernandes (Production team)
Ryan is a sports fanatic who plays football, volleyball and basketball.
Play: ENDS AND BEGINNINGS

Best Director

Vivek Narayan
Play: ENDS AND BEGINNINGS

Vivek Narayan has a day job as a content developer. He pursues his interest in the theatre mostly in the evenings and over the weekends. He like Warren passed out of St. Xaviers’ college in 2005 and has majored in English Literature. His previous full-length directorial effort was THE FIRE AND THE RAIN, which was produced by the English department of the college and was part of the College festival, Ithaca in 2004.

He founded the Shoestring Theatre with Warren D'Sylva more than a year back. Bijoy Idicheriah joined Shoestring Theatre before the team began work on ENDS AND BEGINNINGS. The group has previously worked on Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs, which Warren directed, while still in college. Vivek says that their theatre group then went by the name Act II Scene I Productions, for some obscure reason.

Best Play

ENDS AND BEGINNINGS