Feb. 13: The Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre (EZCC), Calcutta, will hold a seven-day Natya Utsav in association with the state department of cultural affairs and Srimanta Sankardev Kalakshetra authorities at Kumar Bhaskar Natya Mandir in the city from Sunday.

Seven selected Assamese, Hindi, Bengali and Manipuri plays will be staged during the festival in a bid to popularise theatre in the region. On the inaugural day on February 15, city-based Katha Theatre group will stage Assamese play Momor Ghar, to be directed by Abinash Sarmah.

K. Kishworjit’s play The Question, to be performed by Paradise Theatre of Manipur, and Baharul Islam’s Assamese play Yatra to be performed by Seagull Theatre group of Guwahati will be staged on February 16 and 17 respectively.

Moloy Biswas’ two Bengali plays — Dharmagol and Adrishya Asukh — will be staged by Natyabhumi of Tripura and Aneek group of Calcutta on February 18 and 19 respectively.

Assamese play Tikendrajit will be staged on February 20. The play will be conducted by Kanaihalal of Imphal. The seven-day festival will wind up with Usha Ganguly’s Kashinama.

The plays are selected from the theatre groups of nine member states and one union territory, the EZCC said. Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Manipur, Orissa, Sikkim, Tripura, West Bengal and Andaman and Nicobar Islands are the members of the EZCC.

The theatre festival will give an opportunity to the city’s theatre buffs to watch some select plays in regional languages, the EZCC said. The centre further said holding of such festivals would provide a platform to the region’s budding theatre artistes.

“The purpose of holding the festival is to provide basic opportunities and facilities to those involved in theatre to stage their creations and thereby help generate interest in theatre among the masses,” an EZCC press release said.

The festival will be held under a policy formulated in 2003 by the Union ministry of tourism and culture to popularise theatre and to strengthen the theatre movement in the country, the release said.

Apart from the Natya Utsav, various other types of theatre festivals, theatre workshops and monthly theatre shows were organised by the EZCC, other zonal cultural centres and the department of culture.

The EZCC, as per the government’s policy, has so far organised an experimental theatre festival in Calcutta in October last year, a monthly theatre show in Calcutta in January and a traditional theatre festival in Bhubaneswar in February.