For years, the conversation revolving around Indian theater focused on actors, directors and performances. Chiguru X Kusumale, the upcoming theater festival in Bengaluru, wants the audience to experience the author instead. Launching this week at the Prestige Center for Performing Arts (PCPA) in Bengaluru, the festival is a celebration of new Kannada playwriting, bringing together fresh scripts, live productions, seminars and much more.
Organized by the Language Centre, the festival will run from June 6 to 14 and will showcase nine original plays that have been refined and developed through the Girish Karnad Fellowship for Kannada Playwriting. “It is a celebration of nine new voices on the Kannada theater stage,” says Vivek Madan of the Bhasha Centre.
He said the event was “going to be a place for people to come together to hear stories and see them unfold, and to engage in meaningful conversations, workshops and seminars around the finer aspects of theatre-making.”
Vivek Madan
Unlike most traditional theater festivals that focus on prepared productions, it emphasizes the writing process. Organizers say the fellowship, created as a tribute to renowned playwright and actor Girish Karnad, was created to address “the lack of structured developmental spaces for regional language playwrights.”
Irawati Karnik, one of the facilitators in the program, talked about the long process it takes to get these scripts there. She talks about how important it was to help the playwrights reach their creative solutions, which were far more challenging. The process was also filled with a lot of reworking and refinement of the material. “Good plays aren’t written, they’re rewritten,” she says.
LBW game in rehearsal
Kannada-specific focus
For Madan, the Kannada-specific focus was his primary objective. “There is a need for spaces that people can claim as their own,” he said, explaining that language-specific artistic spaces allow writers to tap into the realities of their own lives and cultural contexts.
Five plays will be staged as full-scale productions, while four will be presented as rehearsal readings. Madan emphasized that the difference was logical rather than artistic. “You don’t have to see a play to be immersed in theater.”
lbw Shringa BV is a coming-of-age story about friendship, cricket and aspirations, set in Bengaluru in 1996, while Ghati! Written by Sumadhura Rao, it is a young woman’s quest for autonomy within familial and political structures in coastal Karnataka.
Similarly, ember Identity, ritual oppression, solidarity and love are examined in Tulunadu by Usha Kattemane Saragu By Maruthesha Kasapura is a story of religion, politics, caste and power rooted in rural life. banna Bheemanna Hattikuni explores caste, performance and artistic resistance in a village.
Despite their differences, Madan believes that the plays share a common basis in life experiences. “The stories are already there,” he says, “they just need to be exposed.”
In addition to the performances, the festival will also include workshops on fundraising, arts management, feminism, politics in performance and more, reflecting the organizer’s desire to create a more sustainable ecosystem for theatre.
at Prestige Center for Performing Arts (PCPA), Konankunte, June 6-14, from 11 am. Tickets cost ₹250, for details call 99001 51383
published – June 06, 2026 06:00 AM IST