The Kala Ghoda Arts festival brings a mix of experimental, commercial and traditional plays across five languages...
January 28, 2016 3:40:07 PM IST MTG editorial
The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival (KGAF) is the country's biggest, free multicultural arts festival, which takes place annually from the first Saturday of February till the coming Sunday. In this year, it will be held from February 6 to 14. The festival is in its 17th edition, and promises to enthrall the audience with a plethora of activities across genres. The primary aim to start the festival was to preserve the cultural value of institutions in the Kala Ghoda precinct, be it art galleries like the Jehangir art gallery and Chatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sanghralaya; or colleges such as Elphinstone and Mumbai University and even libraries like David Sassoon and the Asiatic. To make that possible, the Kala GhodaAssociation was formed in 1998, and has been working towards this direction.
Moving on to the present scenario, among various other events, we see the city's finest theatre people putting up public performances at the festival. Juuhi Babbar Sonii, curator of the theatre section at the festival, describes this time of the year as the most exciting. Furthermore, last year all the plays were structured around the theme of Sparsh (touch), this year the theme is Crossing the Threshold (Seemaprabhava).
''I like to bring in something unique to the festival every year. Like last year, we had performances in over 20 languages, this year I have made sure to include a blend of all genres of theatre together be it commercial, experimental, traditional, monologues, mime and more; again across languages,'' says Sonii.
This is Sonii's third year as the curator of the theatre section, and she feels proud in announcing that she has ''seen the festival grow in countless ways'' during this time. Moving on, we ask her the three productions she would recommend to the audience, and after much thinking (more to herself), she started with the list, which eventually became a list of seven.
''I do not have favourites, all productions are equally important to me, but if I have to recommend some, I can start with Rajit Kapur's ONE ON ONE and Vickram Kapadia's BLACK WITH EQUAL. Moving on, I found TEE in Marathi to be intriguing. How often do we have horror plays?''
Babbar further adds that an out and out commercial play by Paritosh Painter is also included in the festival. It is called SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NOEVIL, DO NO EVIL along with a premiering show of MAIN SAVITRI BAI PHULE by veteran theatre actress Nadira Zaheer Babbar in a solo performance.
''A Jalandhar-based theatre company is presenting an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which I found extremely intriguing. The play is titled JAB SHEHAR HAMARA SOTA HAI. Lastly, one should also not miss Gujarati theatre's torch-bearer Manoj Shah's MOHAN NO MASALO, she adds.
