Manthan – India’s largest street play festival organized by Verve, the street play society of Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies commenced on 18th of February.
The festival covers more than 30 cities across India and this year it started with a performance at St. Bede’s College in Shimla on the topic ‘Politics’. This was followed by a performance at Mall Road in Solan and Paltan Market in Dehradun. Over the next few days the festival reached the city of Patiala in Punjab followed by the opening of the festival in Delhi by Verve, performing their annual production ‘Finding Shammi’ at the CBS campus.
The festival has already witnessed participation from various colleges of Delhi University. Ramanujan College and Shaheed Bhagat Singh College (Evening) performed at V3S Mall, Laxmi Nagar on 24th February. This year will be the 8th edition of Manthan, a festival which aims to retain the essence of nukkad natak and to spread awareness of various issues across the barriers of languages, states and cultures.
To ensure Manthan spreads to all regions, 80 renowned street play teams from across the country have come together to perform at around 150 locations across the span of 4 weeks. To ensure that this voice is heard by all the stratum of the society, Manthan performances will be held at schools, NGOs, malls, slums, marketplaces, monuments and public places.
This year also brings the Nukkad Ki Awazein, a Manthan Initiative to digitise street play choruses in order to preserve the beautiful art form.
The 30-plus cities to be covered in Manthan include Jaipur, Jodhpur, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Vellore, Goa, Chennai and Chandigarh. The festival is expected to go on till 22nd March 2015.
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