Veteran playwright and director Ratan Thiyam is set be conferred with a Lifetime Achievement honour for 2016 at the upcoming Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META).
The award will be be given to the theatre guru and current chairman of the National School of Drama for "creating a new language in theatre and enriching the art form in various roles as writer, director, designer, composer and choreographer" organisers said today.
In the past, this award has been given to theatre greats such as Zohra Sehgal, Badal Sarkar, Khaled Chowdhury, Ebrahim Alkazi, Girish Karnad and Heisnam Kanhailal.
The jury for the 11th edition of the awards were also announced today.
Author Kunal Basu, director-actor M K Raina, dancer- choreographer Tanushree Sarkar, actor-director Sushma Seth and actor Kusum Haider are among the jury who will choose the best among the 10 shortlisted plays from various languages like Hindi, English, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali and Urdu.
The awards are in the categories-- Best Play, Best Director, Best Stage Design, Best Light Design, Best Innovative Sound Design, Best Costume Design, Best ACtor in a Lead Role (Male), Best Actor in a Lead Role (Female), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Male), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Female), Best Original Script, Best Ensemble and Best Choreographer.
The 10 shortlisted plays are "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" (English), "After Death- The Spiritual Journey" (non verbal), "Kuhaimaravasigal" (Cave tree dwellers) (Tamil), "The Balcony" (Malayalam), "Akshayambara" (Kannada), "Haoao- The Eleventh Planet" (Bengali), "07/07/07" (English, Hindi, Farsi) "Main Huun Yusuf Aur Yeh Hai Mera Bhai" (Urdu, Hindi), "Agnes of God" (English) and "A Friend's Story" (English).
The plays are scheduled to be staged here from March 5- March 10.
