Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival from November 20

Hyderabad: The Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival, India's biggest privately-run theatre event, will be held in an abridged form over a single weekend this month.

The festival, featuring five plays, will not only be a tribute to theatre legend Qadir Ali Baig, but will also be an occasion to thank Covid-19 warriors, boosting the morale of both the country's theatre fraternity and theatre lovers. The prestigious festival, now in its 15th year, is curated by leading theatre personality Mohammad Ali Baig, a Padma Shri awardee. Scheduled on November 20-22, it is being presented by the Government of Telangana's department of Information and Public Relations and Telangana Tourism and Radisson Blu Plaza.

Baig said that every year the foundation organises the festival over 10 days across multiple venues in Hyderabad. However, this year in view of the pandemic, the foundation, which hosts 150 artistes from all over the globe, is presenting the festival in an abridged format over a single weekend. The festival this year will feature plays from classics of Kalidas to the absurdism of Mrozek, from mythological fare and lockdown stories, from 'Dastangoi' and monologues to comedy and dramatised reading, from Rajasthan, Delhi, Assam, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana

The festival will see staging of plays from K V Subbanna, Heeba Shah, Mohammad Ali Baig with actors Danish Husain, Bhageerathi, Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, Daulat Vaid and others. It will be live with online bookings on www.bookmyshow.com and will be streamed online at a later date.

Theatre-lovers will be treated with plays like Danish Hussain's 'Dastangoi', a delightful journey across cultures and continents through the traditional, vibrant storytelling format, Subbanna's 'Shakuntala Ke Saath Ek Dopehar', a modern-day look at Kalidasa's heroine Shakuntala through a glimpse of an afternoon in her life and 'Striptease', renowned Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek's hilarious perspective of freedom and expression through this absurdist play about two middle class men who find themselves confined in a single space.

The other play is 'Dona', written by Arun Kolatkar and directed by Vaid. It is a lyrical poem drawn from an incident in the Ramayana. It highlights the ideological social distances between the young and the old as well as the ancient and the modern, while questioning if human culture is the best. The festival will conclude with Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation's 'Alone' written by Noor Baig and directed by Mohammad Ali Baig, it features Suchitra Krishnamoorthi. A dramatisation of Noor Baig's short story, it is about a yesteryears star who. during the pandemic lockdown, reflects on her solitude and the many characters she has played in her life.