Jury 2011

ANURADHA KAPUR
Anuradha Kapur is presently Director of the National School of Drama, New Delhi. She has written widely on the theatre and has taught and directed in India and abroad.  Some of her well known productions are Gora, Umrao, Sundari: an Actor Prepares, The Antigone Project jointly directed with Ein Lall, Centaurs, and most recently John Gabriel Borkman among others. She is one of the founder members of Vivadi, a working group of painters, musicians, writers and theatre practitioners, which was formed in 1989. In 2003 she was invited to curate the performance window actors at work at body.city, an event citing contemporary Indian culture at the House of World Cultures, Berlin. Anuradha Kapur was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akedemi award for Direction in 2004.

ARUNDHATI NAG
Arundhati Nag is the Creative Director by designation and the heart and soul of Ranga Shankara (www.rangashankara.org). Her career as a theatre actress spans a period of 35 years, six languages and over 1500 performances. She has worked with most of the country’s well-known directors and has essayed varied roles from Shakespeare to Karnad. Arundhati has also acted in several films in Kannada, Hindi and Tamil. She wrote Hindi dialogues for Malgudi Days, the TV serial directed by Shankar Nag (based on R K Narayanan’s eponymous novel) that created waves decades ago.

MAHESH ELKUNCHWAR
Mahesh Elkunchwar is a well known playwright with more than 22 plays to his name, in addition to his theoretical writings, critical works, and his active work in India’s Parallel Cinema as actor and screenwriter. He has experimented with many forms of dramatic expression, ranging from the realistic to symbolic, expressionist to absurd. He has influenced modern Indian theatre for more than three decades starting with his play Sultan in 1967. His plays are written in Marathi and have been subsequently translated into multiple Indian and Western languages (including English, French and German). His growing body of work has become part of India’s post-colonial theatrical canon and has gained national and international critical attention. He has been honored with many awards and honors including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Saraswathi Samman, one of India’s highest literary awards.

NEELAM MANSINGH
Trained in the History of Art and in Theatre, at the Panjab University, Chandigarh, and National School of Drama, Dr Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry committed herself to the world of theatre early on.  In 1984 in Chandigarh, she formed  her own theatre company The Company and is currently teaching at the Department of Indian Theatre of the Panjab University, and heading it as its Chairperson. The plays produced by her repertory have for the most part been based upon great classics of the western world, rendered into Punjabi by the eminent poet, Surjit Patar. For many of them the music was composed by B.V. Karanth. Her body of work includes Racine’s Phaedra, An Unposted Love Letter by Doris Lessing, Nagamandala by Girish Karnad, Little Eyolf by Henrik Ibsen, Blood Wedding by Lorca, and Stree-r Patro (The Wife’s letter) adapted from a short story by Rabindranath Tagore. Dr Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry has been the recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi award, and recently the Padma Shri for 2011. She is a member of the Academic Council of the National School of Drama, and serves on the advisory panel for theatre for The Indian Council for Cultural Relations.

UTKARSH MAZUMDAR
Utkarsh started his career in theatre in college and continues to do both professional and experimental theatre in Hindi, Gujarati and English. Acha Ek Baar Aur was his first Hindi play directed by Satyadev Dubey. Having done a number of plays and some musicals as well, some of his most notable plays are Cyclewallah by Vijay Tendulkar, Avinash by Shanta Gokhale, Foot notes of Life by Nadira Babbar, Wedding Album by Girish Karnad, Black with Equal & Going Solo by Vikram Kapadia. Along with Sunil Shanbag, Shishir Sharma & Akash Khurana, Utkarsh founded the theatre group – Arpana. Besides directing documentaries & being a producer for Doordarshan, he has acted in movies such as Shyam Benegal’s Antarnaad, Naseerudin  Shah’s Youn Hota To Kya Hota, and Ram Gopal Verma’s Satya. Utkarsh writes a regular weekly column for a Gujarati newspaper and is currently acting in the TV serial Muktibandhan.