Theatre festival to promote lesser known cine actors

In the first such initiative in eastern India, big names of Bengali film industry are organising a theatre festival to explore and promote the acting skills of their lesser known colleagues.
The festival, scheduled on August 14 is named 'Tolly Stage' after the Tollygunj film industry in the city and the big names promoting it are thespian Soumitra Chatterjee, Bengali film superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee under the aegis of West Bengal Motion Picture Artists' Forum.
"We intend to put the new talents under the limelight through this initiative. There will be five theatre performances directed by well known names on Bengali stage like Shaantilal Mukhopadhyay, Kheyali Dastidar and Chaiti Ghosal," Prosenjit told PTI.

Soumitra, who is the president of the Forum is the "guiding force" behind the initiative, the 'Khwato' and 'Sankhachil' actor said.
The five plays will be enacted on a stage named after iconic Bengali matinee idol Uttam Kumar and will be judged by a panel of film directors like Goutam Ghose, Kaushik Ganguly, Sandip Ray and others.
"We want to give exposure to these lesser known actors to our internationally known directors. We will also launch Twitter, Facebook page of the forum where the performances of these actors will be highlighted," he said.

A website of the forum is already on the net with details of the theatre festival, said Prosenjit.

Asked about his role in backing the forum, he said "Arindam Ganguly and I had grown up with the forum. This came into being following days of talks between us.
"May be, me and others are not as much visible these days as in the past due to our shooting commitments. But in this present age of communication that is not much of a problem," he said.
Arindam, who is the chief advisor of the Drama Committee and Artiste Forum, said, "We hope this festival will also give chance to many junior members in TV soaps.
"So far we had been trying to help the economically disadvantaged artistes and technicians. Now we want to promote the creative talents as well giving them a platform where they can learn the craft from big names," he said.

The forum, which has 2200 members, will celebrate its 18th birthday on August 14.