Live. Love. Laugh. For Airtel Lifestage — Calcutta Theatre Festival, in association with t2, is here with its three-weekend fare from across the country.

Four out-of-town productions — two in English, one in Hinglish and one stand-up comedy act — and a Bengali play will be staged over three Saturdays and a Sunday, starting November 12, at Vidya Mandir.

Chennai’s leading youth theatre group Evam opens the festival this Saturday with Chasing My Mamet Duck. Actor-director Rajit Kapur’s team Rage will present Chaos Theory on November 19, preceded by Calcutta boy Anuvab Pal’s half-hour comedy act.

Debshankar Halder provides the Bengali link with Topi on November 26, while Akvarious Productions from Mumbai brings the curtains down with Rafta Rafta on November 27.

The second edition of Airtel Lifestage was unveiled on Tuesday at Fortune Select Loudon with theatre veterans Rajit Kapur (from Mumbai), Shantilal Mukherjee (from Calcutta), and Anirban Mukherjee of Storyteller.

“I have very vivid memories of performing in the city and it is always a pleasure to come back here because Calcutta has always been a very elite, perceptive, receptive audience as far as theatre is concerned. One needs theatre everywhere, we need to support theatre in every form. I am glad Airtel is sponsoring such an event and it is great to be a part of it. I hope we can get a chance to bring our other plays, simply because we want to keep performing in Calcutta,” said Rajit ‘Bomkesh’ Kapur, who runs the theatre group Rage in Mumbai.

The focus on English as the medium for most of the plays was ensured keeping in mind Calcutta’s “intrinsic link” with Indian theatre in English.

“Calcutta has always had a strong audience who appreciate English theatre, so though we have kept the format of the show pretty flexible in terms of genre and theme, our focus was that all the plays should be in English, with one production adding local flavour. Also, we wanted plays which have not been performed in Calcutta before,” said Anirban Ghosh, COO, Mobility WBO Circle, Bharti Airtel.

The festival also marks the directorial debut of Debshankar Halder. The critically acclaimed actor will direct Shantilal Mukherjee for Storyteller’s production Topi, the only Bengali play at the festival.

Topi is a comedy about two friends, written by Arindam Mukherjee, which Debshankar will direct and act in, alongside Shantilal.

“Events like these not only promote local talent but also allow us to watch other performers from across India. I have always been a fan of Rajit Kapur and thanks to this festival, I am seeing him in person,” said Shantilal.

The theme of Airtel Lifestage 2011 is ‘Live. Love. Laugh.’

“I would rather put it as ‘Laugh.… Love.… Live’. As a race, we have stopped laughing at ourselves. We shy away from it. So, making that a focus for the festival is great. We do say that love is the greatest thing but if you stop seeing it separately, if you put all of it together, the dish that you have is life itself,” added Kapur.

Passes for the shows are available at all Airtel relationship centres for free; they will also be available at Vidya Mandir between 2.30pm and 7pm on show days.

Chasing My Mamet Duck

Group: Evam

Directed by: Karthik Kumar

The play: Inspired by David Mamet’s The Duck Variations, this play looks at life through a collage of short films, monologues, dialogues, piano interludes and even an auction.

Cast: T.M. Karthik Srinivasan, Yudhishthir Rana, Anil Srinivasan, Anisha Varghese and Karthik Kumar

When: November 12, 7.30pm

Topi

Group: Storyteller

Directed by: Debshankar Halder

Written by: Arindam Mukherjee

The play: A comedy about two friends — one innovative, the other enthusiastic — in search of a dream called Mumbai.

Cast: Debshankar Halder and Shantilal Mukherjee

When: November 26, 7.30pm

Stand-up comedy by Anuvab Pal

A writer with a number of successful plays, two novels and two film scripts to his credit, Anuvab Pal performs stand-up comedy acts in his spare time.

When: November 19, 8pm

Rafta Rafta

Group: Akvarious Productions

Directed by: Tahira Nath and Akarsh Khurana

Written by: Ayub Khan

The Play: Rafta Rafta is a warm-hearted comic tale about close-knit Indian families living abroad.

Cast: Kshitee Jog, Ahlam Khan, Adhaar Khurana, Akarsh Khurana, Abir Abrar and Faisal Rashid

When: November27, 7.30pm

Chaostheory

Group: Rage

Directed by: Rahul da Cunha

Written by: Anuvab Pal

The play: It’s based on the theory that two particles can get strongly attracted to each other and remain in a pattern infinitely without ever meeting. The plot lays the foundation for the cliched question — can a man and a woman ever be friends?

Cast: Anahita Uberoi, Shaana Levy, Sohrab Ardeshir and Zafar Karachiwala

When: November 19, 8.30pm