Paresh Rawal, Naseeruddin Shah to open Shreeram Lagoo National Theatre Festival on May 25

Pune: In a city where classical ragas command all-night devotion and cinema enjoys its annual intellectual pilgrimage, theatre has often existed in fragments. Pune has long had audiences, institutions and restless young performers, but not quite a national platform devoted entirely to experimental theatre. The inaugural Shreeram Lagoo National Theatre Festival is determined to change it.

Organised by Maharashtra Cultural Centre, the week-long festival will run from May 25 to May 31 at the Shreeram Lagoo Rang-Avakash in Hirabaug Chowk. It will open with a conversation between veterans Paresh Rawal and Naseeruddin Shah, moderated by theatre director Vijay Kenkre. In a modestly radical gesture, the organisers have chosen dialogue over ceremonial ribbon-cutting and the traditional lighting of lamps, setting the tone for a festival more interested in inquiry than spectacle.

The line-up itself resists easy categorisation. There are plays in Assamese, Hindi, English and multilingual formats, alongside productions that rely heavily on physical storytelling rather than dialogue. Rajesh Deshmukh, secretary of Maharashtra Cultural Centre, said the programming was consciously designed to avoid alienating audiences unfamiliar with regional languages.

“We have curated the plays in such a way that Pune audiences will be able to understand and appreciate them, even if they are in different languages,” Deshmukh said.

“While most productions are in English or Hindi, there are also plays in Assamese and Malayalam with a strong visual context that makes them accessible beyond language barriers,” he said.

The selection includes Raghunath, Naam Mein Ka Rakhwo Hai?, Do You Know This Song?, Eden Creek, Bengal, The Zoo Story, Shyok, Home In a Suitcase, Apne Ghar Jaisa and Kohoo, An Anthology on Rails.

The festival’s ambitions extend beyond staging plays. Two major symposiums will examine experimentation in Indian theatre and the transformation of Marathi playwriting over the past 25 years. The discussions promise to move beyond polite academic analysis and delve into the mechanics of how theatre itself is evolving. Theatre personalities such as Abhilash Pillai, known for blending circus performance with theatre, puppet theatre artist Anurupa Roy, and other noted thespians, including Kedar Shinde and Abhiram Bhadkamkar, will participate.

Deshmukh noted that Marathi theatre itself is undergoing a churn across commercial productions, competition plays and non-commercial spaces. One symposium, curated by Bhadkamkar, will focus specifically on these shifts and explore what the future of Marathi scripts might look like.

There is also something refreshingly democratic about the festival’s script-reading initiative. An open call drew nearly 65 submissions, with three emerging playwrights selected for live readings during the festival.