Pensha

November ushers in Children's Day with lots of activities lined up for the young ones. Amongst them is Junoon Arts & Education Foundation's School Programme, which will be bringing two plays for students of Delhi Public School, Mohammadwadi, Pune. Under Theatre Adventures module, children between the ages of 8-10 can watch Catch the Crocodile by Gillo Theatre Repertory and the 11-13 year olds can watch Jhalkari by Rahi Theatre. The School Programme is one of the signature programmes of Junoon and Savitri Medhatul of the group explains the initiative. “Junoon has been co-founded by Sanjna Kapoor and Sameera Iyengar. Its primary motive is to make arts available and accessible to people. The most common refrain we hear is, 'Arts is not for us'. Or 'This is too complicated'. We think that arts has to become a part of everyone's day to day life. This is the umbrella motive of Junoon. And, we have multiple programmes keeping this in mind,” says Savitri...

Sanjna Kapoor doesn't mince words when it comes to voicing her thoughts on ensuring a shift for the theatre from 'survival' to 'thriving' mode. It's this clarity of thought and expression that Sanjna wants every theatrewallah to embrace. “If you know what your non-negotiables are, you will be able to make more advantageous use of the work that you have done and plan to do, resulting in a deeper impact,” she says. Prioritise and then strategise The conversation that we had on the sidelines of Maharashtra Cultural Centre's annual theatre festival, Rangmahotsav began with us asking her thoughts on behemoths like popular regional TV channel backing and producing Marathi plays and a dish TV having a separate channel for telecasting of experimental and commercial dramas. Is it a good sign? “ Marathi television has been showing recorded commercial plays for many years now. But I have no knowledge of Tata Sky's dedicated channel to theatre so I ...