WELCOME TO THE FINEST THEATRE EXPERIENCE

Old WorldTheatre Festival

2012October 12 - 21

October 12th-21st OWTF strides into its 11th year at Habitat World, faithfully pursuing its vision to promote and

nurture theatre and fulfilling its commitment to audiences bringing them a pick of the best plays of the year.

Recognized as one of the oldest and the most prestigious theatre festivals, OWTF is a platform that all theatre

groups look forward to performing on. For Collegiate Dramatics, it is undeniably a much coveted event, being the

only mainstream Festival to accord a performance opportunity to their productions.

Over the years OWTF has been a catalyst that has triggered off several new and laudable theatre ventures. Our

lineup this year is an exciting and broad sweep across genres, styles, debuts, stalwarts and premieres!

Opening with a premiere of Mahesh Dattani’s new play Where Did I Leave My Purdah? directed by Lillete Dubey

and closing with Konark directed by Ramchandra Singh from Naya Theatre, the theatre company established in

1959 by the pathbreaking & legendary director Habib Tanvir, the other plays are- The Bureaucrat- A Comedy by

Anuvab Pal directed by Rahul da Cunha; The Hoshruba Repertory's Chinese Coffee directed by Danish Husain,

the NSD Repertory’s Dafa 292- based on the life and times of Saadat Hasan Manto, directed by Anoop Trevedi;

Nothing Like Lear, a devised performance based on Shakespeare’s King Lear directed by Rajat Kapoor; and

Nandita Das’s directorial debut in theatre Between The Lines.

On stage is a galaxy of theatre stars that include among others Anu Menon, Soni Razdan, Nandita Das, Lillete

Dubey,Bugs Bhargava Krishna, Atul Kumar, Danish Husain & Aamir Bashir Khan.

The Colleges finalized for this year’s Collegiate plays are- Maitreyi, Ramjas, Kirori Mal, Lady Shri Ram,

Indraprastha College for Women, SGTB Khalsa & Hansraj.

Its Playtime ! Enjoy the Fest.!

Old World Theatre Festival '12

Old World Culture was conceived as a Trust to promote the arts and thereby enrich and enhance the cultural options

available in the city. Any profits that Old World Culture makes through the year are committed to nurturing the

Performing Arts and will be used towards theatre subsidies and scholarships.

Amongst other things, Old World Culture funds the YouthReach Apprenticeship Programme, an initiative to give

children from various NGOs the opportunity to apprentice under renowned artistes.

Old World Culture

Inspired by the spirit of the famous doyens of yesteryear like Zohra Sehgal and others, this play is set in the world of theatre and cinema, against a background of 50 years of history including the Partition. It is set against the famed company theatres that performed dance dramas through the 1950s till the 80s.

Where Did I Leave My Purdah is a drama on the life and times of an actress who saw the world in her art, but ignored the sharp vicissitudes of the real world outside. Nazia is an actress who has been through four decades of performance, and seven decades of personal travails and political upheavals. She sails through life on her talents that include a bizarre and funny look at life, though at the cost of affecting the lives of those who are unfortunate to be close to her.

Playwright : Mahesh Dattani

Director : Lillete Dubey

Theatre House : Primetime Theatre Production

Cast : Lillete Dubey, Soni Razdan, Neha Dubey, Sid Makkar

Language : English

Duration : 90mins with a 10min interval

Where Did I Leave My Purdah

Oct.12 | 6:30pm & 8:30pm

2011. Not India's best year. Protest movements everywhere, the government authorities crumbling, the economy in despair, young people on Twitter making noise to change things. In the middle of all this, our hero, Raghuvir Gupta, an aging discarded colonial bureaucrat in Delhi is pulled up by his Minister for an important task. A young MTV VJ who calls himself Dishoom has launched a nationwide campaign with a catchy tune to start a massive protest called “Kapre Utaro Middle Classes”. It involves taking off pants to show unhappiness with the government. The nudity is about to occur on Janpath at the exact time our PM's convoy is supposed to pass with the visiting dignitary Nicholas Sarkozy of France. The Minister appoints Raghuvir to stop this from happening. Why is this man, a dinosaur in New India, picked to negotiate with this young hip teenage movement? Because Dishoom is Raghuvir Gupta's son.

Will Raghuvir convince his son? Or Will Kapre Utaro happen and Sarkozy witness nude India? Who's hiding what skeletons in their closets? This 1 hour 45 minute rollicking political satire, in the spirit of Yes Prime Minister meets Aap Ki Adalat, takes a laugh-out-loud look at the times we live in, through deceitful Delhi bureaucratic intrigues, backroom deals of secret corruptions, hidden pasts, the convolutions of Indian politics, and a man trying to come to terms with his own son, and eventually, himself.

Playwright : Anuvab Pal

Director : Rahul da Cunha

Theatre House : Rage Productions

Cast : Bugs Bhargava Krishna, Neil Bhoopalam, Jaswinder Singh, Prerna Chawla, Aseem Hattangady, Anu Menon

Language : English

Duration : 105mins with a 10min interval

The Bureaucrat – A Comedy

Oct.13 | 6:00pm & 8:15pm

Chinese Coffee is a play about friendship and the loss of it. Harry Levine and Jake Manheim are two friends and failed artists. Harry is an obscure novelist, and has written a third novel. He has given the manuscript to Jake for his feedback. Jake a brilliant writer, wrote two critically acclaimed short stories when 19, but a photographer now, lives modestly. Meanwhile, few months back Jake took a loan from Harry but has not returned it till date.On this particular night, Harry broke, thrown out from his job at the chic French restaurant, decides to pay a visit to Jake to recover his money. But Harry is keen on Jake's views on his new novel too. As the evening unfurls, it turns out that Jake has read the novel but pretends he hasn't. What ensues is the crux of the play. The play Chinese Coffee- both the stage and film version, originally had Al Pacino playing the pivotal role and the movie was also directed by Al Pacino. This is the first time the play is being staged in India under license from Dramatists Play Service, Inc. New York, the copyright holder of the play.

Playwright : Ira Lewis

Director : Danish Husain

Theatre House : The Hoshruba Repertory

Cast : Aamir Bashir, Danish Husain

Language : English

Duration : 100mins with a 10min interval

Chinese Coffee

Oct.14 & 15 | 7:00pm

Society had weapons of laws but Manto had the power of literature. He had to himself the world of art, his imagination, and his words in which his artistic visions ruled. He embraced filth ridden alleyways, slums and the subaltern to find resonance in the thoughts of the mind of the other. His world was unhindered by prejudices. For his open mindedness, Manto had opened doors for the characters generally considered as social outcasts in literature. He was a visionary whose ideas still find relevance in the contemporary scenario. The play, based on the life and times of Manto, mirrors life in its truest form.

Playwright : Saadat Hasan Manto

Director : Anoop Trevedi

Theatre House : NSD Repertory

Cast : All the artists of National School of Drama, Repertory Company, New Delhi

Language : Hindi

Duration : 75mins

Dafa 292

Oct.16 & 17 | 7:00pm

Ever thought what a clown does when he is depressed?It sure is tough being a clown.Here is one who hasn't stopped crying for days...And he has plenty of reasons for it.The one he loved the most has left him and gone away… for good.Then, he is not getting any younger. In fact- he is old.But more than anything else, he is depressed because he has been forced to perform this play.He wasn't supposed to play it tonight but circumstances have forced him to do this play about a king and his daughters...Written by, what's his name- the great English writer, you know, bald... bearded- who says “thee-thou-thy”, you know...That guy, what's-his-name, “the show must go on..” guy;You know, the 16th century English writer... oh well.And now he is stuck;This clown, who has enough problems of his own,Who can't even remember the playwright's name-Now he is in a pot. He must perform.Life isn't fair…Well, no wonder he is depressed!!

Playwright : A devised performance based on Shakespeare's King Lear

Director : Rajat Kapoor

Theatre House : Cinematograph and The Company Theatre Production

Cast : Atul Kumar (show at 6:30pm)

Vinay Pathak (show at 8:30pm)

Language : English & Gibberish

Duration : 80mins

Nothing Like Lear

Oct.18 | 6:30pm & 8:30pm

Between The Lines is set in contemporary India where educated and affluent couples are caught between modernity and the traditional world. It explores the relationship between a lawyer couple, who have been married for 10 years. Shekhar is a high profile criminal lawyer while Maya, balances work and life by drafting routine contracts for a law firm. One day they accidentally end up being on opposite sides in an attempted murder case. Shekhar is the prosecutor and Maya, the defense lawyer. As they fight the case in the court, their personal life starts getting impacted.

Between The Lines peels, layer by layer, what is said and also what is often left unsaid in a couple's relationship.

Playwright : Nandita Das, Divya Jagdale

Director : Nandita Das

Theatre House : Chhoti Production Company (CPC) Pvt. Ltd

Cast : Nandita Das, Subodh Maskara

Language : English

Duration : 80mins

Between The Lines

Oct.19 & 20 | 7:00pm

Konark depicts the end of an era- of the art of stone-carving. Amongst the various temples of medieval India, the Suntemple of Konark was the very last to be built. The only temple to be created with the science of magnetic engineering, it is also known to receive the first rays of the Sun in India. The myth goes that the magnet of the shikhar of the temple was so powerful, that it helped in giving directions to the ships across the Bay of Bengal. However, no worship or ritual ever took place in the temple. This very mystery intrigued Habib Sahab to take up the play.

Going back seven hundred years in time, Utkal (modern day Orissa) was flourishing in the arts, especially that of stone carving. Vast classical style temples were being built all over India. Utkal's king Narsinghdev was a strong and an able ruler. A patron of the arts and an artist himself, he wanted to dedicate a temple to the Surya Devta in the city of Konark and call it the Suntemple. Builders and stone carvers were appointed for the herculean task from all over the country. Their number swelled to twelve hundred and they were to totally devote themselves to this task for a period of twelve years. The building of the temple did get completed within the time frame except for two vital aspects of its construction- the craftsmen were unable to fix the shikhar of the mandir and suspend the idol of the Sun God in the sanctum…

The play poses questions and throws light on Utkal's cultural ethos, its political turmoil and social aspects of the craftsmen's lives of those times.

Playwright : Jagdish Chandra Mathur

Director : Ramchandra Singh

Theatre House : Naya Theatre

Cast : Nageen Tanvir & artists of Naya Theatre Company

Language : Hindi

Duration : 115mins with a 10min interval

Konark

Oct.21 | 4:00pm & 7:00pm

Akka, Amoli, Anni is a comic-satire revolving around three characters- “Akka” the elder sister, “Amoli” the younger sister and “Anni” a young girl (domestic help), working in their house. Through the character of Anni, the play poses a stark comment on the relevance of education.

The play attempts to put under scrutiny the status quo of the education system, under which the essence of true learning is lost. Human beings have become machines which store information and replicate it whenever required. The critical and creative brain easily becomes a slave to the mechanical ways of working. The play also reflects the plight of the students under the Semester System, which follows a repetitive pattern of exams, further causing hindrance in their overall development. With Akka, Amoli, Anni, Abhivyakti aims to create a space where humanity is valued, where girls can be free from shackles of traditional domination of thought- not a feminist approach, but a basic human feeling, where one, regardless of gender, is free to desire.

College : Maitreyi College

Theatre Society : Abhivyakti

Directors : Rashi Mishra, Madhu Bhagat

Playwright : Munshi Premchand

Adaptation : Inspired by Bade Bhaisahab

Language : Hindi

Duration : 45mins

Cast : Anamika, Indu Singh, Krittika Uniyal, Meenakshi Thapa, Nidhi Goswami, Nidhi Jangra, Payal Bose, Purbita Bhakta, Ridam Arora, Riya Singh, Sakshi Sood, Shefali Chadha, Twinkle, Vrinda Pathela

Backstage & : Deepmala Tiwari, Sakshi Sood,Production Credits Shikha Mishra, Annu Yadav

Akka, Amoli, Anni

Oct.12 & 13 | 7:00pm

We are products of our thinking. Our lives are shaped by the decisions we make- part free will, part destiny. The Park traces the happenings of an eventful sunny afternoon, as it eventually turns out for three individuals, bent on getting their space. Their stories unfold, revealing their past as also mingling with their present. The reasons for their presence in the park are brought to light. The decisions that will shape their future are made.

The Park explores questions of territoriality and displacement by dramatising the conflict between these three men as each attempts to oust the other for his own preferred place.

College : Ramjas College

Theatre Society : Shunya

Directors : Shubham Bhatia, Aasheet Badlani

Playwright : Manav Kaul

Language : Hindi

Duration : 60mins

Cast : Shubham Bhatia, Gopal Verma, Wilson Joy, Pushpita Mitra, Aasheet Badlani

Backstage & : Aasheet Badlani, Kush Gupta,Production Credits Kartikeya Sharma, Ajitabh Singh,

Prashant Verma, Dhwani Kapadia

The Park

Oct.12 & 13 | 8:00pm

Sadak Paar, based on Sam Holcroft's Dancing Bears, is an unsentimental exploration of the blurred and shifting boundaries that separate victims from oppressors. Debunking any notion of a solidarity of the oppressed, the play discovers seductions of loyalty, intent and power through which young men and women counter the debasing effects of their social and economic deprivation. Through an interesting move whereby female actors enact roles of both 'boy' and 'girl' gang members, Dancing Bears underlines the fact that gender provides no refuge from the violence and exploitation that characterise intra-gang relations.

College : Kirori Mal College

Theatre Society : The Players

Adaptation & : Shalini Bhardwaj, Danish HassanDirection :

Discussants : Rupesh Sharma, Neel Sengupta

Playwright : Based on Sam Holcroft's Dancing Bears

Language : Hindi

Duration : 60mins

Cast : Upasya Goswami, Anshul Chauhan, Himani Pant, Ritu Ahuja

Backstage & : Anuj Chopra, Arpit Gupta,Production Credits Gautam Arora, Shalini Bhardwaj,

Danish Hassan, Nina Sud, Parul Bansal, Rupesh Sharma, Neel Sengupta

Sadak Paar

Oct.14 & 15 | 7:00pm

Five people queue up in a line. Waiting for what or who is never made clear, but each of them is determined to get to the front nonetheless. Using all kinds of stratagems to get ahead – some honest, some plainly clever, and some rather dubious – this static race to the top becomes a bleak metaphor of the times in which we live. And of the games we play with others and with ourselves as we teeter on the brink of chaos.

College : Kirori Mal College

Theatre Society : The Players

Adaptation : Neel Sengupta, Gautam Arora& Direction

Playwright : Israel Horowitz

Language : English

Duration : 60mins

Cast : Shardul Bhardwaj, Jasjit Singh, Sana Taneja, Rohan Ranganathan, Gautam Arora

Backstage & : Anuj Chopra, Bharat Dhawan,Production Credits Sarthak Dewan, Himani Pant,

Anshul Jain, Nina Sud, Parul Bansal, Rupesh Sharma, Neel Sengupta, Shalini Bhardwaj, Danish Hassan

Line

Oct.14 & 15 | 8:15pm

The Skeleton Woman is a modern day love story between a reclusive and eccentric writer, and his wife, intersected at many junctures, by an Inuit folk tale. The play and its characters continuously swing between past and present and fantasy and reality. The play attempts to capture the nuances of this tumultuous relationship and test the limits of the imagination of the writer. Themes of fame, love, guilt and reproach are interestingly explored in the plot.

College : Lady Shri Ram College

Theatre Society : Dramatics Society

Director : Garima Jaju

Playwright : Prashant Prakash, Kalki Koechlin

Language : English

Duration : 45mins

Cast : Saumya Deojain, Garima Jaju

Backstage & : Pooja Mohanraj, Nupur Samar,Production Credits Nishtha Pandey, Raksha Thakur.

Special thanks to Nadia Sherwani

The Skeleton Woman

Oct.16 & 17 | 7:00pm

What happens when one questions one's existence, wholeness, primal desires and life's decisions…?What happens when it's unnatural for everyone else to even notice all that…?

Four different individuals, looking beyond their individualities, try to answer their own questions by finding reasons in the absurdities life brings to them. Perhaps they will never have those questions answered or maybe they will, but they will always crave for something to satisfy them and this sometimes can make them confront life's darkest truths.

A girl who is suppressing horrid memories of her childhood is made to confront them while constantly rejecting her lover who unconditionally loves her. At another level her relationship with her absent mother takes strange routes as the mother steps out of her dysfunctional marriage to be with a struggling author who is disillusioned about his own life.

The meaning of space, definition and reality is lost here only to find their roots in chaos, vagueness and illusion.

College : Indraprastha College for Women

Theatre Society : Abhivyakti

Directors : Ritika Popli, Pallavi Manchanda

Playwright : Sarah Kane

Adaptation : Ritika Popli, Palak Bhambri

Language : English

Duration : 45mins

Cast : Akshita Khullar, Alina Ali, Mini Dixit, Surabhi Dogra

Backstage & : Taruni Gupta, Ayesha Safwi,Production Credits Pallavi Arora, Aruja Srivastava,

Divyata Gogia, Raveena

Crave

Oct.16 & 17 | 8:00pm

The play explores what counts as a marker of territorial entitlement — caste, city, region, religion? Or is it something more ephemeral?

Questions of control over place are worked out by territorial claims over property. Madan, insists that he simply wants to sit on the park bench so that he can feel the drops of water splash from his colleagues’ freshly washed hair as she dries it in the balcony across the park. Uday, is delusional after witnessing a traumatic scene of ethnic violence, yet the implications of this moment are untapped and awaits richer elaboration. Nawaz simply wants some peace to take a nap on the park bench while awaiting his son’s school examination results.

Larger questions of political displacements loom over the play as characters invoke the trauma of forcible evictions suffered by political groups as diverse as Palestinians and Kashmiris, Tibetans and adivasis.

College : SGTB Khalsa College

Theatre Society : Ankur

Director : Ayush Gupta

Playwright : Manav Kaul

Language : Hindi

Duration : 60mins

Cast : Namash Bhardwaj, Dhruv Vats, Prabhjot Singh, Firoz Khan, Saheb Kaur, Srishti Gupta

Backstage & : Mansi Sethi, Srishti Gupta,Production Credits Gurdiksha Alangh, Ritika

Chauhan, Srishti Gupta

Park

Oct.18 & 19 | 7:00pm

Ek Tha Gadha, as a political satire throws up extremely poignant pointers on power struggles and the extent of inhumanity that our leaders are ready to travel to retain their power. The comedy revolves around a Nawab, accompanied by his boot-licking advisors, darbaris and kotwal, who announce the mourning and an unprecedented gesture of a state funeral for just a donkey, misunderstood by them to be a man adored by the public! The plot takes a serious turn when they realise their mistake and scramble to fix it.

College : Hans Raj College

Theatre Society : Dramatics Society

Directors : Pranav Sachdeva, Dharmendra Kumar

Playwright : Sharad Joshi

Language : Hindi

Duration : 55mins

Cast : Dharmendra Kumar, Abhinav Anand, Aman Kashyap, Abhishek Anand, Prashant Yadav, Jiya Bhardwaj, Prem Parija, Rishabh Sood, Gaurav Tikiya, Sheetal Arora, Aishwarye Rajput, Purusharth Budhiraja, Kawal Singh, Hemant Pandey, Hansa Malhotra, Pranav Sachdeva

Backstage & : Ayushi Kumar, Ishan SoniProduction Credits

Ek Tha Gadha

Oct.18 & 19 | 8:15pm

Keval Arora

Theatre Advisor

Associate Professor at Deptartment of

English, Kirori Mal College, Keval Arora isactively involved with mentoring the work of

students in collegiate theatre since the '80s.

He is also theatre commentator and critic.

Oct.23 | Scenography Workshop facilitated by Deepan Sivaraman, Associate Professor-Performing Art, School of Culture & Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University.

Deepan Sivaraman, a director, visual artist, designer, writer and scholar, holds BA, MA, M Phil degrees in theatre and is a post graduate from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, London. His PhD ‘‘Spatial Identities And Visual Language In Indian Theatre’’ from Wimbledon College of Art, London, explores the possibility of an interactive visual language in theatre alternative to word based drama. Deepan is the founding artistic director of Oxygen Theatre Company one of the most leading cutting edgy theatre groups in India. He taught scenography at University of the Arts London for 5 years. Deepan has designed and directed around 46 performances for various companies and academic institutions in India and Europe. Recipient of three META awards, his works have been part of Indian scenography national exhibit at Prague Quadrennial '11.

Oct.20 | Critique & Analysis of the staged plays by theatre mentor Neel Chaudhuri

Neel Chaudhuri, a playwright and theatre director, is the founder and the Artistic Director of

The Tadpole Repertory, a collective committed to producing original theatre in Delhi. Neel

wrote his first play, Positions in 2006 and has since written and directed eight plays, including

Taramandal, for which he received the 2010 MetroPlus Playwright Award. His most recent

play is Still And Still Moving, which was developed with the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Old World Theatre Festival '12

FESTIVAL AT A GLANCE

Oct.12-13 7:00pm onwards (Hindi/45mins) by Abhivyakti, Maitreyi College & (Hindi/60mins) byShunya, Ramjas College

Oct.14-15 7:00pm onwards (Hindi/60mins) by The Players, Kirori Mal & (English/60mins) by The Players, Kirori Mal

Oct.16-17 7:00pm onwards (English/45mins) by Dramatics Society, Lady Shri Ram College & (English/45mins) by Abhivyakti, Indraprastha College

Oct.18-19 7:00pm onwards (Hindi/60mins) by Ankur, SGTB Khalsa & (Hindi/55mins) by Dramatics Society, Hans Raj College

Oct.20 7:00pm onwards Critique & Analysis of the staged plays by theatre mentor Neel Chaudhuri, Founder, Tadpole Repertory

Oct.23 10:00am onwards Scenography Workshop facilitated by Deepan Sivaraman, Associate Professor-Performing Art, School of Culture & Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University

Akka, Amoli, Anni The Park

Sadak Paar Line

The Skeleton Woman Crave

Park Ek Tha Gadha

THE BEST OF COLLEGIATE THEATRE

An Old World Culture Presentation

Oct.12 6:30pm & 8:30pm (Eng/90mins with a 10min interval) Dir.Lillete Dubey. Cast: Lillete Dubey,Soni Razdan, Neha Dubey, Sid Makkar

Oct.13 6:00pm & 8:15pm (English/105mins with a 10min interval) Dir.Rahul da Cunha. Cast: Bugs Bhargava Krishna, Neil Bhoopalam, Jaswinder Singh, Prerna Chawla, Aseem Hattangady, Anu Menon

Oct.14-15 7:00pm (Eng/100mins with a 10min interval) Dir.Danish Husain. Cast: Aamir Bashir, Danish Husain

Oct.16-71 7:00pm (Hindi/75mins) Dir.Anoop Trevedi. Cast: All artists of National School of Drama, Repertory Company

Oct.18 6:30pm & 8:30pm (English/Gibberish/80mins) Dir.Rajat Kapoor. Cast: Atul Kumar, Vinay Pathak

Oct.19-20 7:00pm (Eng/80mins) Dir.Nandita Das. Cast: Nandita Das, Subodh Maskarad

Oct.21 4:00pm & 7:00pm (Hindi/115mins with 10min interval) by Naya Theatre. Dir.Ramchandra Singh. Cast: Nageen Tanvir & artists of Naya Theatre Company

Where Did I Leave My Purdah

The Bureaucrat – A Comedy

Chinese Coffee

Dafa 292

Nothing Like Lear

Between The Lines

Konark

At Amphitheatre

W RLDO

Tickets are available at the venue and online on www.habitatworld.com

Main Plays are priced at ` 400, ` 300, ` 100 & Collegiate plays at ` 100. For more details, call 91 11 43663080/90

Habitat World at India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003

The Stein Auditorium