The Jaipur Theatre Festival was established in 2001 by 3m Dot Bands Theatre Family, and renamed Jaipur Rang Mahostava or Jairangam in 2012.
Thanks to the commitment of Festival Director Deepak Gera, the Festival has grown into a vibrant celebration of the performing arts, one of the biggest and best in the country. In a press note he states: “The magic of art and theatre has the power to transform an audience, an individual, or en masse, to transform them and give them an epiphany experience that changes their life, opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think. Jairangam started with an aim to celebrate diversity and to uplift the scenario of theatre in Jaipur and Rajasthan. The previous seven seasons proved to be tremendously successful and the eighth edition was another feather in the cap. In view that the dream that Jairangam weaved for Jaipur is now a reality, it plans to weave the same dream for other states in the country – Maharashtra, Kolkata, and Karnataka.”
For the first time, the Jairangam Fringe Theatre Festival comes to Mumbai, with six plays over three-days (December 15-17) at the new Mukkti Cultural Hub in Andheri. The plays are all from Mumbai—maybe future editions of the Festival will be able to invite plays from outside—but it is a good mix of professional and amateur productions, and well worth a trip to the suburbs, for those who may have missed earlier shows. Besides, audiences need to discover the new venue, set up by Smita Thackeray.
The schedule includes:
Shiv Subrahmanyam’s The Way I See It—a one-woman play starring Divya Jagdale (https://www.deepagahlot.com/divya-jagdale-theatre-interview/ ) as a forty-something woman trying to make sense of her life.
Makrand Deshpande’s (https://www.deepagahlot.com/makrand-deshpande-theatre-interview/) outstanding Pitaji Please, with Swanand Kirkire and Zahan Kapoor (https://www.deepagahlot.com/?s=Pitaji+Please ) is about the conflict that arises when a Hindu boy falls in love with a Muslim girl.
Hardik Shah’s Kiss Of The Spider Woman, Manuel Puig’s original adapted by Prateek Srivastava, is about the unlikely friendship between a cross dresser and a political prisoner sharing a jail cell, with Shah, Mukti Ravi Das, Gurinder Kumar, Lalita Pandey in the cast.
Niresh Kumar’s Baanswada Company (in pic) is about a theatre director in Rajasthan, who wishes to perform Shakespeare with Nikhil Modi, Sachin Bhatt, Amrit Arora, Jaswinder Singh, Jyoti Negi, Madhumita Barik and others in the large cast.
Hum Gunahgar Autarein has Sadiya Siddiqui reading from the works of feminist Urdu writers.
Atul Satya Koushik’s (https://www.deepagahlot.com/atul-satya-koushik-theatre-interview/) Ballygunge 1990 (https://www.deepagahlot.com/ballygunge-1990-play-review/) is a two-hander thriller about what transpires when former lovers (Annup Sonii-Nishtha Paliwal Tomar) meet after a long gap.
For Bookings: https://www.jairangam.org/fringes-mumbai
