The Bhavan’s Cultural Centre, Andheri and Chitralekha, the popular Gujarati fortnightly revived the tradition of the full-length Gujarati Drama Competition in Mumbai last year. This year the first round of the competition took place in Mumbai, Surat and Vadodara. 27 theatre groups participated and cash prizes worth 1.75 lacs were distributed in various categories. The final round took place from 6th to 14th January 2008, during which 8 plays were staged in all. Three of them were from Surat, one was from Jamnagar and four were from Mumbai.

The best play prize went to Surat Cultural Academy’s JANMA. The play’s concept was provided by Ravindra Parekh and the the writer and director is Prakash Mehta. Based on the life of actors in the old tradition of the theatre in which men took on women’s roles, the play thematically reminds one of MASTER PHOOLMANI.

The second best play prize was given to DANCE LIKE A MAN, a Gujarati translation of Mahesh Dattani’s original English play. Produced by Jamnagar’s Theatre People, the play was directed by Viral Rachchha.
The third prize was awarded to Mumbai’s Our Creation’s AVARE VARSAD. Once again the play has been translated from Vijay Tendulkar’s original Marathi and has been directed by Kiran Patil. The play is about the inner beauty and magical touch to create awareness about it, the magical touch is love, and man’s fear of making commitments and taking responsibility. Is there any escape? No!

The best directors 1st prize was given to Prakash Mehta for JANMA. The second best director’s prize was given to Ketan Rathod for the play ANE EK DIWAS. The third prize for Direction was given to Viral Rachha for directing DANCE LIKE A MAN.

The best actors’ award was given jointly to Prakash Mehta and Pravin Patil for their roles in JANMA. The second prize for Acting went to Jai Vithalani for DANCE LIKE A MAN and the third prize was given to Vinay Ketkar for his role in AVARE VARSAD.

The best Actress’ award was given to Urvashi Upadhyay for ANE EK DIWAS. The second prize was given to Meghana Solanki for AVARE VARSAD while the third prize jointly went to Twisha Shukla and Daivi Shukla for BIJUN KOI NATHI.

The best supporting actor’s prizes were respectively received by Vaibhav Biniwala, Viral Rachchha and Bharat Solanki while the best supporting actress’ awards went to Dipmala Parmar and Komal Bhat. The best youth talents awards were handed over to Mihir Rajda, Parth Desai and Jai Kapadia.

The best writer’s award was given to Prakash Mehta for his original script JANMA. The best Art direction’s award was given to Javed Kazi and Paresh Thakkar for BIJUN KOI NATHI. The best lighting design went to Anjay Todankar for AGANTUK and for Music design to Mehul Surati for BIJUN KOI NATHI. For costume design the award was given to Bahurupi for ANE EK DIWAS.

During the award giving ceremony, seven senior veterans from Gujarati theatre-Kalpana Diwan, P, Kharsani, Dr. R. K. Shah, Bachu Sampat, Chhel-Paresh and Tarak Mehta were honored.
The competition initiated by Chitralekha just last year has gathered support by many more and that is good news, although credit goes to Chitralekha as it has promised to finance the event for five years. But it is imperative for the Bhavan organizers to host the plays at its auditorium in Chowpatty too. That way more people will be able to see the young talent from Gujarat. It would be a good idea to also keep a part of the prize money for supporting the making of future productions since the whole idea is to promote theatre. The award winning group should be asked to perform the play in the subsequent year rather than concocting a variety entertainment program at the award giving ceremony. It is heartening to see that plays from small cities in Gujarat are competing well with the so-called Mumbai’s superior theatre culture and their commercially successful plays.

*The above information is courtesy Bhavan’s Centre Andheri, with inputs from Jyoti Vyas.