Kapil Bora and Zerifa Wahid enact a scene from Napoleon. File picture

Guwahati, Nov. 25: From one-off plays a year, the Zerifa Wahid Production, in its eighth year of promoting the theatre movement, is set to get bigger and better. It is organising Just Theatre, a four-day festival, from Friday to showcase the works of renowned playwrights.

The festival, to be held at Rabindra Bhawan here, hopes to give the audience an enthralling experience by presenting a wide range of plays — from the boundless ambition of an emperor to the pangs of separated lovers to the complicated issues of marital lives.

The production house, formed by popular Assamese actress Zerifa to take forward the serious theatre movement in the state, has earned a name over the years.

“Since the setting up of the production house in 2007, we have been staging a play every year. We received quite a good response from the audience, which encouraged us to think of organising a drama festival. This is our humble effort to let the audience enjoy some popular plays,” Zerifa said.

The three plays to be staged during the festival are — Napoleon (written by Assamese playwright Arun Sarma) on Friday, Nagmandal (by Kannada playwright Girish Karnad) on Saturday and Sunday and the Assamese adaptation of Love Letters (by American playwright and novelist A.R. Gurney) on Monday. Love Letters, which centres round only two characters, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Zerifa said every year they promote social causes like checking cancer and child labour by staging plays.

“This year, we have decided to promote autism. We will try to give some visibility to the organisations working in the field of autism by highlighting them in our banners/posters and giving their address, contact numbers in our brochures so that a right message goes out to the people on the issue,” she said. The cast for the plays includes Zerifa and actor Kapil Bora. The plays will be directed by Abhinash Sarma. “It is rare to find a festival staging all the plays directed by one director. I am fortunate to have such an honour,” Sarma said.

Folklorist Birendra Nath Dutta will inaugurate the festival at 3.30pm on Friday.

The organisers said they wanted to make the event a little longer but could not do so as Rabindra Bhawan was unavailable. “Barring the four days that we have got for the festival, all other days in this season have been booked,” said Zerifa.

Sarma lamented the lack of quality auditorium, barring Rabindra Bhawan, in the city. “Many commercial complexes have come up in the city over the years. But it is sad to see that no steps have been taken to set up a theatre hall,” he said.

Zerifa said they would make the event bigger next year.