Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival to celebrate milestone year with 20 plays over 20 days

Celebrate Shankar Nag's legacy with Ranga Shankara's 20th anniversary festival featuring 20 plays in 20 days.

For fans of Shankar Nag and Kannada cinema, November holds special significance as the month of their beloved “Auto Raja.” Each year, admirers across the state celebrate his birth anniversary on November 9, with festivities coinciding with Kannada Rajyotsava. For theatre enthusiasts, October and November marks a key cultural event: the Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival (RSTF). Held at Ranga Shankara in JP Nagar, this beloved theatre space was built in memory of Shankar Nag by his wife, acclaimed actor Arundhati Nag. 

As Ranga Shankara reaches its milestone 20th anniversary this year, the organisers are gearing up for an unforgettable month-long celebration, from October 10 to November 10, that will take place every Thursday to Sunday. The iconic venue will host RSTF, an event that will feature 20 plays over 20 days. This milestone event reflects two decades of commitment to nurturing contemporary theatre in India, showcasing performances in multiple languages, including Kannada, Hindi, English, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese, Sanskrit, Lepcha, and more. 

Since its inception in 2004, Ranga Shankara has emerged as a cultural beacon in India’s theatre scene, with 7,500 shows across 36 languages and an audience of 1.2 million. The brainchild of Arundhati, the venue has become a hub for artistes and theatre enthusiasts alike, offering an affordable platform for local, national, and international talent.  

Back in 2004, Ranga Shankara opened with a 45-day long festival, and speaking to The Hindu, Arundhati Nag explains how different the first festival was from the ones that followed. “Back then, we had no idea what we were doing. It was a 45-day festival and we were still painting the walls, checking the toilets and the air conditioning and more. We were not even sure if we could accommodate 320 people in one sitting,” she recalls.

“I must credit so many people who made the first and almost every other festival possible — Suri (S Surendranath, theatre maker and trustee at Ranga Shankara), my friend Gayathri, our auditor Ranga Rao, the legendary MS Sathyu, Girish Karnad and many others have been the pillars of Ranga Shankara.”

“We had Bombay-based theatre maker Atul Kumar, who moved to Bengaluru and planned the entire festival with us over six months. Money was not a concern as we had sponsors; few theatres, built by middle-class people like us, could have had such a big opening. Now in 2024, the festival is not too different; of course money has not been easy to get, but putting the event together has always been fun,” she adds.

Arundhati says that though all the festivals over the last two decades had a theme, this year they decided to simply celebrate the fact that Ranga Shankara and theatre “have been wedded to each other for twenty years without compromising on artistes’ needs.”