Drama fest to follow film feast

kolkata: close on the heels of the kolkata film festival, a theatre festival will be held in the city from wednesday. organised by the eastern zonal culture centre (ezcc) the festival will be held simultaneously in kolkata and kalyani. besides local plays, there will three plays by groups from bihar, madhya pradesh and karnataka. the venue for the kolkata leg of the festival will be madhusudhan manch and the opening play is natya ranga's sirajuddaula.in kalyani, the festival will start on tuesday and the venue is ritwik sadan. the opening play in kalyani is anamni angana's swapna sandhani. the three plays from outside the state are: renu ki rang by manch art group (hindi), moteram ka satyagraha by hum theatre group and smashana kurukshetra by spandana (kannada). ezcc director p.k. mohanty said, "this is the sixth festival organised by our centre." from last year, the venue has been shifted from ezcc's aikatan complex in salt lake to city auditoriums. "this has been done with the aim of attracting a bigger audience," said mohanty. the budget for the festival is rs 3 lakh and tickets have been priced between rs 15 and rs 25. among the future events planned by ezcc is a classical music workshop from november 27. mohanty, who has been appointed director a few days ago, said he has plans on making aikatan a major cultural hub. the complex started functioning four years ago. "i hope to have performances at aikatan every day of the year," he said. six zonal centres were set up by the centre in 1986 with a corpus of funds to which every state government has contributed rs 1 crore.