There are many South Asian community theatre groups who have been running plays for many years. Nautanki Theatre is working along with three of these organisations to bring you three ‘one act’ plays for the first year of the South Asian Theatre Festival.

A Bangla play ‘A Time Machine’ directed by Asim Das will represent the Bengalis from India and Bangladesh, a Tamil play ‘Nettandu’  directed by N.K. Srini will find common lingual identity of migrants from Southern Indian state Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka and a Marathi play ‘Ukrida’ directed by Napoleon Almeida who has Goan background.

Nautanki Theatre will be presenting the plays from Sydney Marathi Association, Sydney Nadaga Priya and representatives from the Bengali Association of NSW in language back to back for two evenings.

Dates & Times:
Thursday 24th November at 7.30pm
Friday 25th November at 7.30pm

Entry to this festival is free however Nautanki Theatre would like introduce the concept of Pay-as-you-Think.
Selling tickets at a fixed rate is a known concept in theatre where producers sell the show as a commodity with an attached price tag.

Nautanki Theatre wants to reverse the cycle by shifting the power to the audience to evaluate and pay what they think the show is worth. However paying is not mandatory. This aim of this model is to slow down the commercialism of performing arts in Australia starting at grass-roots level.

The Time Machine: Presented by Natguru.
Cast – Bobby Mallick, Deb Bhakta, Amitava Sen and Rima Sen
Light – Priyabrata Hazra
Sound – Asim Das
Make-up – Madhulekha Das

Nettandu: Presented by Sydney Nadaga Priya.
Cast – Shankar Ramanathan, Jaishree Shankar, Dhilip Uppili, Gayathri Srinivasan, Venkatakrishnan Kedharanathan
Lights & Sound- NK Srinivasan
Support Crew & Makeup Assistance: Rama Vishwanathan, Lakshmi Uppili, Vijaya Muralidharan, Bhavani Ramakrishnan

Ukirda: Presented by Marathi Association of Sydney Inc.
Cast – Manasi Gore, Ashirwad Athavale, Rasik Kulkarni, Isha Wadhavkar, Mandar Pathak, Ketan Desne, Makarand Bildikar, Sanjyot Samudra
Off the stage – Napoleon Almeida
Sound – Nitin Kundap

Festival Team

Artistic Concept Designer: Neel Banerjee
Festival Co-ordinator: Reema Gillani
Marketing Co-ordinator: Sunny Singh
Community Connectors: Aparna Tijoriwala, Dinsha Palkiwala, Bobby Mallick, Suman Mathur, Varsha Daithankar
Artwork: Avijit Sarkar

Q&A on Friday 25th November after the show. Duration 20 min