Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling will inaugurate the five-day long Winter Theatre Festival at Manan Kendra on Saturday evening. The festival is being organised by Sikkim Theatre Training Centre of National School of Drama in collaboration with Cultural Affairs & Heritage Department.
Sikkim Theatre Training Centre is the first training centre of the NSD outside Delhi established in the year 2011. The centre started its repertory company by taken its passed out students as artists in 2012.
The five-day long festival will stage five different plays every evening at 5:30 PM from February 24 to 28. The inaugural day of the festival has a very popular play ‘Hami Nai Aafai Aaf’, which has already got appreciation at different parts of the country. This play has been inspired by Padma Sachdeva’s novel, Ab Na Banegi Dehari and designed and directed by Bipin Kumar.
The second day of the festival will stage the play ‘Ab Aur Nahi’ (Inspired by Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet) on February 25 and followed by ‘Sahasi Aamala’ (based on Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage & her Children’) on February 26, ‘Niyam Tah Yehi Cha’ (based on Bertolt Brecht’s play The Expectation & the Rule) on February 27 and ‘Tirkha’ (based on Rabindranath Tagore’s story Hungry Stones) on February 28.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, STTC Camp Director, Bipin Kumar stated that the main objective of the festival was to take local artists of repertory company of STTC close to the theatre lovers of Sikkim through these plays in the festival. He added that another objective of the festival was to further promote theatre culture among the people of Sikkim and to increase theatre audiences in the state and also to preserve the art and culture of Sikkim.
“We are very happy to promote and provide national and international exposures to technically sound and talented artists of Sikkim at different parts of the country and outside,” he said. He stated that the NSD would continuously work to provide bigger platform to artists in the national and international levels.
Kumar informed the STTC has started Spring Theatre Festival in 2016 and has been conducting the festival every year in the month of February and March in all four districts of Sikkim and in North Eastern states.
“But this time we have to pre-pone the festival in January due to the 8th Olympic Theatre Festival to be held from February 17 to April 08 this year,” he said.
Winter Theatre Festival was started on January 10 at Mangan and then held at Namchi on January 12 and finally at Gylashing on January 14. A play ‘Maya Megh’ was staged at all three places.
“We are very happy and excited that the CM of Sikkim will be inaugurating our festival and will also witness our play by local professionally trained artists of STTC for the first time,” he said.
He welcomed theatre lovers and people of Sikkim to come and witness the festival to encourage artists of the centre.
Responding to media queries, Kumar informed that 35 artists of STTC’s repertory company will be performing these five plays. “It is very challenging for our artists as well to play the role of another character every next day in different plays during the festival,” he said.
“We have been getting encouraging response and larger audience at Gyalshing every year. Especially at Gyalsing, people from Sakyong and Kyongsa have been coming to see our plays by booking buses every time. This was very encouraging response for our artists,” he said.