Jury 2012

Amal Allana
Presently Chairperson of the National School of Drama, New Delhi; Amal Allana has been associated with theater and art for a very long time. After graduating from National School of Drama, she went on to do two year apprenticeship at the Berliner Ensemble and other theatres in Germany. Drawing from international theatre traditions, her productions are intercultural exercises that allow her to be both deeply Indian, as well as truly international.

Amal has directed over 60 plays for the stage, several plays and serials for television,
designed costumes for stage and film, curated exhibitions, researched and written on theatre and engaged in various other related activities. Some of her productions for the stage include Aadhe Adhure, The Good Person of Setzuan, Khamosh!, Mahabhoj, King Lear, Himmat Mai, Begum Barve, Erendira & Her Heartless Grandmother , Nati Binodini and Metropolis. She is the Head of Acting at The Dramatic Art & Design Academy and Artistic Director of a theatre company, Theatre & Television Associates, New Delhi.

Ananda Lal
Ananda Lal is Professor of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He has been a theatre critic of The Telegraph since 1986. He has thirty plays to his credit as director. Apart from being an editor of the Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre (the first reference work on this subject in any language), he also translated Tagore: Three Plays which is the first book in English on Tagorean drama. He is one of the few Indians to hold a PhD in Theatre.

Darshan Jariwala
Darshan Jariwalla has been in his own words 'now in making for past 36 years and yet evolving'. This versatile actor switches between Theatre, TV and Films as effortlessly as he dons various hats as a writer, director and occasionally - a producer.

His passion is acting for stage for which he does not mind juggling professional commitments from Malad, Melbourne and Maldives.

His eyes glint at the prospect of working with writers like Manav Kaul, Shivani Tibrewala and directors like Sunil Shanbagh and Naseerruddin Shah. Winning the National award for his portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi in the film Gandhi, My Father has reinforced his determination to seek quality in his creative efforts even while surviving the rigours of the market place. For the play Bombay Talkies, which stars Darshan, he was describesd as a 'multiple choice work-in-progress'.

Mukund Padmanabhan
Mukund Padmanabhan is the Senior Associate Editor of The Hindu. He oversees some of the newspapers supplements (including the Sunday Magazine, Literary Review and MetroPlus) and writes editorials on legal and political issues. He curates two international festivals, of theatre and music, on behalf of the newspaper -- the MetroPlus Theatre Fest and the Friday Review November Fest. These festivals are held annually in Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi and Coimbatore.

Soumik Bandyopadhyay
Samik Bandyopadhyay is a critic of the Arts and a Visiting Fellow (Professor), School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, Delhi. He has lectured extensively in the USA, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh & England and has given a series of lectures on Indian cinema in various overseas universities. He translated plays and fiction by Badal Sircar and Mahasweta Devi; contributed introductions to plays by Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Elkunchwar, GP Deshpande, Satish Alekar; and reconstructed filmscripts for films made by Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen for vaious publications.