Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival Press Meet (Nov 2014), Hyderabad

The much-anticipated Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival is back in Hyderabad in its 9th edition from 7th to 16th November this year. The annual festival, a landmark event on the local and now global cultural calendar, is another trend-setting dimension of the vibrancy that the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation has brought in the last decade in Hyderabad. The Foundation and the Festival, curated by Padmashri awardee and globally-feted theatre icon Mohammad Ali Baig are tributes to theatre legend late Qadir Ali Baig.

Like every year, the prestigious Festival is spread across the city in multiple venues, like Ravindra Bharathi, Salar Jung Museum, Alliance Frangaise and Taj Deccan, featuring the creme de la cr&me of theatre from across the country and overseas, the theme of this year’s Festival is ‘Biographies’. Ranging from real-life stories of actors (by Mohan Agashe) to rulers (by Padmashri awardee Mohammad Ali Baig), victims of abuse (by Usha Ganguli, Mita Vasisht, Dolly Ahluwalia) to the imaginary (by Vani Ganapathy), to the comic (by Rakkesh Bedi). The stupendous success of the Festival prompted the Foundation to introduce a Fringe Section this year, titled ‘Bouquet’, with an emphasis on European Circus Theatre (France’s La Compagnie 3 Fois Rien and Spain’s Murray Molloy), plus Telugu theatre’s Rallapalli and Girish Karnad’s latest play feature in this new section of the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival).

This Festival’s regular ‘Workshops’ and ‘Book Release’ sections are equally interesting with the European circus artistes conducting a workshop on ‘Techniques of Circus Theatre’, Mumbai’s Rakkesh Bedi’s ‘Writing Comedy’ and Kolkata’s Usha Ganguli with a workshop on ‘Rhythm and Body Language on Stage’, while Urdu poet and art critic Kadir Zaman’s ‘Open Book’ is to be released during the ten-day international extravaganza. The Festival is part of the new Government of Telangana’s ‘Happening Hyderabad’, in association with Telangana Tourism, Salar Jung Museum, Embassy of France, Golden Jubilee Hotels and Resorts, The Trident and Alliance Fran?aise Hyderabad. Presented by the KARVY Group.