The internationally acclaimed The Golden Dragon will be performed at Jagriti from today. Following the successful staging of Lysistrata, Jagriti Theatre is now set to stage The Golden Dragon, as part of its ongoing theatre festival. A tragicomic tale of globalisation, set in your local Thai\ Chinese\ Vietnamese takeaway, The Golden Dragon— which will be [...]

The New Year brings a festive offering from Jagriti. While the first play of the season was Lysistrata, a farcical Greek play  done in Bangalore by local actors the second is an Internationally acclaimed play that is funny in parts but talks about a larger socio-economic malaise to which India is no stranger-Immigration and more [...]

The evening started with Alyque Padamsee presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to Arundhati and Jagdish Raja from Bangalore. The award acknowledged the Rajas’ undying passion for theatre and the fact that they had opened up the world of theatre to generations of young Bangaloreans — be it through their banner Artistes Repertory Theatre or the recent 200-seater Jagriti Theatre.

Jagriti at the end of its first year is functioning reasonably well. This may not have been the case a few years earlier. Jagriti has also won the Aces for Space Award 2011 as the best public space building for India!

It’s not that Bangalore has always been kind to theatre. But somehow the theatre lovers have always found a way to keep it alive — from a tangible perspective as well as getting people, sometimes even converting the philistines, to keep their faith in the arts alive.

These plays are in no hurry to let the curtains fall. Each lasts 18 days for a period of six months so you can feast on some wit and drama at Jagriti.

This is the story of two Arundhatis, their husbands and their extraordinary passion for theatre. It is about theatres — Jagriti and Rangashankara — that the two Arundhatis built at the opposite ends of Bangalore, which today make for a vibrant, happening dramatic theatre scene in the city.

Jagriti Theatre’s first season will give theatre lovers a chance to be part of a unique festival that will ensure participation from all those keen on attending it — the festival will run for six months from December this year to June 2012. To celebrate 30 years of existence, Jagriti Theatre will showcase a collection of six plays by playwrights and theatre companies from India, UK and the US along with mainstream theatre with the aim to reach a wider audience.

“What we’ve aimed to do is showcase the sheer variety of content and dramatic forms for the Bangalore audience. If Shipwrecked! is an ensemble performance where three actors play 22 characters, then The Dreams of Tipu Sultan is a full costume drama. The Interview and A Twist of Lime were selected because we want to promote new Indian writing in English,” explained Arundhati.