LAHORE: The Lahore Arts Council will hold a week-long theatre festival for which the council has written letters to different education institutions, asking them to send their students teams to participate in the event.

It will be a week-long festival in which dramatic societies of different institutions, including the National College of Arts, Beacon House National University, Punjab University, Kinnaird College are expected to participate.

“The festival will be essentially for the families, with an objective to promote quality theatre”, LAC Executive Director Ather Ali Khan said. He said such initiatives helped young actors to unfold their theatrical talent and provide them a platform where they could come up with innovative ideas.

He said bibliography of 500 digitised plays from 50s and 60s that were staged at Alhamra would be available online. He added that interested theatre students could also visit the Research and Reference Library of Alhamra.

Mr Khan said the council would soon establish a corner at Alhamra where old recordings of memorable musical evenings and plays would be available.

He said the LAC would have copyrights of all that material which could not be reproduced since it was the property of its Research and Reference Section.

The council has also asked those interested in participating in the event to submit the scripts for their respective productions, which would be approved by the council’s scrutiny committee. New ideas and innovative approach would be appreciated and encouraged, he added.

It will be a non-ticketed event for which the schedule and dates will be announced later.

Mr Khan said there would be a grand opening ceremony of the festival where leading stage, television and film artistes would be invited to discover new talent.

All the participating theatrical teams from different educational institutions would be given certificates and shields at the closing ceremony.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2020