Bengaluru: Ranga Shankara turns 20! Month-long fest to celebrate diversity

BENGALURU: Ranga Shankara, one of the city's prominent theatre spaces, will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a theatre festival starting Thursday. The festival will feature a variety of performances in multiple languages, including Kannada, English, Hindi, Hindustani, Marathi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Lepcha, Bengali and Assamese.

From Oct 10 to Nov 10, the festival will showcase both traditional and experimental works, with performances scheduled each weekend. Four renowned Kannada theatre groups — Benaka, Spandana, Kalagangotri, and Samudaya — will be part of the lineup, marking their own 50-year anniversaries.

In addition to the mainstage performances, the festival will host two seminars on current issues in the theatre community, along with workshops aimed at community engagement. A parallel festival of platform performances, puppetry plays for adults, and musical performances titled ‘Mehfil' in the foyer will also take place.

The lineup includes theatre artists like Manav Kaul, Ravindra Khare, Shabana Azmi, Lakshmana KP, Guru G Venu, Kapila Venu, Rajiv Krishnan, TM Krishna, P Rajagopal, Abhishek Majumdar, Kumud Mishra, Atul Kumar, Ratna Pathak Shah and Naseeruddin Shah.

The month-long fest aims to highlight diversity and richness of theatre, while engaging with the wider community through performances and discussions.