KARACHI: The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) will present Kalidasa’s play Shakuntala from April 17 to 27, announced the artistic director of the Napa Repertory Theatre, Zain Ahmed, at a press conference on Thursday evening.

Mr Ahmed said the play was directed by Sunil Shankar and himself, while Napa graduate Ahsan Bari had composed music for it. He praised Bari for doing good work and making a name for himself in the field of music.

Mr Ahmed said the reason for staging Shakuntala was that it’s part of the shared subcontinent’s culture and history. If Greece was the place where western drama was born, then the subcontinent was the region where the genesis of eastern drama took place. The other reason was that the play was a romantic story, a story that had been spawning many tales in the form of films and plays, he added.

Mr Ahmed said Napa put up the play in 2009 for the first time, and in 2010 took it to New Delhi where it was very well received because the story was taken from the Mahabharata. This time round, however, there were a few changes as theatre-goers would see new actors on stage, all of whom were third-year Napa students. There would be live orchestra as well, he added.