Veteran thespians take to the stage at the Delhi Theatre Festival

The third edition of the festival will present the classic and the avant-garde with big-ticket names, writes Amrita Singh

For a performing arts culture that has treated Bharata’s Natyasastra as its holy book for some 2,000 years and continued the tradition right up to venerating plays such as Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq (1964), theatre in contemporary India has seemed to be at a crossroads. Accomplished Bollywood actors who chose the lucrative world of film over theatre recall their stage days only with nostalgic affection. Theatre became an increasingly political art form, of interest only to niche audiences. And cinema the preferred form of mass entertainment. While nobody was watching, though, there’s been a revival of sorts afoot.