Youth Theatre in India
...ay, direct it & audition for it. When they do put it up, the lighting, sound, stage & all the other paraphernalia that goes hand in hand with a professional play is provided by the organizers. Undoubtedly, it is this aspect that thrills & attracts most performers.They have other reasons too, for performing here. Santosh Verulkar, Director & actor of the Marathi play ‘Aastha ani gawarichi bhaji’ performs here because he thinks it opens up the Hindi & English audiences for him, “We are noticed on this platform. We may just land up with roles in other languages.” The plays by themselves are visual & auditory extravaganzas. The lighting is appealing & tailor made, the dialogue delivery is convincing, the direction impeccable & the scripts well written. ‘Quality of performance’, may well be placed as the trademark of Thespo. The storylines have ranged from incest to the student-teacher equation to a brilliant adaptation of Vijay Tendulkar’s ‘Sakharam Binder’. These serious topics have been handled very well by the young actors. The general belief here is that Thespo is a festival by the youth, not for the youth. There is no compulsion that only age appropriate plays have to be put up. All the 5 days were also supported by workshops & half hour platform performances. The final day saw a glitzy awards ceremony for Thespo 2004. Nima Kaushik, one of the platform performers this year feels that “Here we are just one big family that keeps on growing. Once we come here, we keep on coming back, either as actors, volunteers or just to see the plays.” Thespo began in 1999 as a pet project or Q theater Productions & Theater Group Bombay, a night of 3 one act plays. It has come a long way since then, spreading its wings to two more cities, Delhi & Bangalore, transforming into a 14 day, 14 play, multi lingual event. It was conceptualized when a group of college students were asked to perform in the NCPA. After a few well received performances, they were asked to leave because they were “too young to be performing there.”...