Curtains go up on NSD satellite strife

PHEROZE L. VINCENT

The National School of Drama in New Delhi; (right) a ground on the campus decked out for the school’s annual festival. Pictures by Prem Singh New Delhi, March 4: Theatre artistes pushing for national drama schools in 18 scheduled languages are feeling cheated by the government’s proposal to set up five regional centres of the National School of Drama in various states. Culture minister Kumari Selja had said in Parliament this week that the centres would come up in Calcutta, one either in Maharashtra or Goa, one in the Northeast, possibly Manipur and one in Jammu and Kashmir. The fifth would be in Bangalore, where the regional resource centre would be upgraded into an NSD centre. The demand for the regional language theatre centres, voiced off and on over the last 15-20 years, had gathered steam in 2007 after former NSD director Prasanna went on a hungerstrike in Bangalore. He called off the fast only after then Union culture minister Ambika Soni assured him his demand would be met. “This was about declaring the theatre in Indian languages as national theatre,” Prasanna said. “Regional centres of NSD were not what we demanded, not what the minister (Soni) said, and it is unacceptable.” Click to follow link