Multi-lingual theatre festival XPRESSIONS 26 to create a stage for diverse stories in Hyderabad

Shudrka Hyderabad’s multi-lingual theatre festival Xpressions 26 is acceptable to situation the mode theatre is traditionally seen and experienced successful Hyderabad. With ‘Breaking the Frame: Proscenium and Beyond,’ arsenic this year’s theme, the three-day multi-lingual theatre festival from June 5 to 7 astatine Rangbhoomi Spaces is lined with performances, seminars, workshops, and masterclasses. The festival celebrates divers theatrical practices and encourages dialog betwixt artists and audiences,” says the group’s founder-director Swapan Mondal.

Exploring caller forms

Launched successful 2023, Xpressions 26 successful its 4th twelvemonth hopes to physically integrate the assemblage into enactment done an immersive experience. This approach, Swapon says, is to bespeak connected a increasing question successful modern theatre to situation accepted stage-audience relationships and research caller forms of performance.

“Several productions successful the festival experimentation with immersive, intimate, and non-traditional theatrical spaces and invitation audiences to prosecute with theatre successful antithetic ways,” helium adds.

Besides Shudrka which is premiering its multi-lingual play Kantho, Awaaz, Arupu-Unsilenced, city-based theatre groups Sifar and Nihati Rangasena signifier Almost Flawless and The Bloody Red Oleander successful Hindi and Bengali. Kochi’s Lokadharmi Theatre and Mumbai-based Roopangan Foundation signifier bi-lingual plays Agleyum Cliyopatrayum and Confession Soup in Malayalam and English.

Standing for truth

A 90-minute theatre accumulation successful Bengali, Telugu, Hindi and English, Kantho, Awaaz… directed by Swapan Mondal is inspired from works of Bertolt Brecht, Utpal Dutt and Harold Pinter. “The play depicts the power’s fearfulness of knowledge,” explains Swapon. “Rooted successful the thought of lasting for information amidst vidwesh—hatred which is sustained done control, division, and silence. The communicative follows a teacher, a scientist, and a assemblage whose connection itself becomes forbidden. In each act, authorization demands obedience not lone from bodies, but from thought, crushed and speech.”

Contemporary adaptation

The Bloody Red Oleander stands retired arsenic the item of this year’s edition. A modern adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), The Bloody Red Oleander, is important arsenic 2026 marks the centenary of the work of Raktakarabi, archetypal published successful 1926. “The play is reimagined successful the discourse of present-day societal and governmental realities; it revisits Tagore's enduring critique of power, greed, and dehumanization, demonstrating the continued relevance of his enactment a 100 years later.”

A level for caller talent

An progressive subordinate of Hyderabad’ s theatre circuit, Shudrka has been staging plays successful Hindi, Bangla, Telugu, and English for much than 2 decades now. Swapon and his squad attended play festivals crossed the state and were inspired to make a signifier that 'celebrates antithetic voices contributing silently to the craft.' The festival besides hopes to beryllium a level for emerging and autarkic theatre groups struggling to showcase their productions. “XPRESSION celebrates plurality and seeks to make a theatre ecology wherever linguistic diverseness is recognized arsenic a spot alternatively than a barrier. In a clip of expanding polarization and division, the festival believes that multilingual theatre offers a almighty reminder that antithetic voices tin stock the aforesaid stage, city, and future.”

XPRESSIONS 26, a three-day multi-lingual theatre festival from June 5 to 7 astatine Rangbhoomi Spaces; Check @shudrka connected Instagram for lawsuit docket and tickets: Bookmyshow