Stepping Out

The Atelier Youth Theatre Festival (AYTW),which began as a small initiative to showcase campus theatre,is today one of the major youth theatre festivals in Delhi. Into its fourth edition,the ongoing festival which ends tomorrow,features 12 stage plays and eight street performances by colleges such as Hindu,Khalsa and Guru Gobind Singh. Time then,says Atelier director Kuljeet Singh,to spread wings. “ We noticed that in Mumbai,the Mecca of theatre,campus plays were few and far between. To give youth theatre there a fillip,we will hold AYTW in Mumbai from December 5 to 9,” says Singh. The first edition of the festival will include four plays by campus groups as well as a performance of the play Dirty Talk by Mumbai-based group Working title 2.0.

“Dirty Talk is about a popular young Indian scientist. Everybody loves him,the capitalists,the communists,the feminists and the socialites,” says director Nayantara Roy. The scientist decides to contest an election and that’s when trouble crops up.

The festival will end in style — with a young Russian troupe called Theatre of Young Spectator of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) which,says Singh,“was selected for the spectacle with which it renders even a simple story”. “They will perform I Am Edith Piaf,based on a story by Nina Mazur. It’s a simple story of a girl who,neglected at home,sets off to explore the world and figure out love,” says Singh,who next intends to take the festival to Kolkata and Bangalore.