Renowned Indian film and theatre director, Vijaya Mehta, will be felicitated with Lifetime Achievement Award at the 13th Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) that will take place from April 13-18, 2018 at New Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium and Shri Ram Centre. Mehta is a founder member of the theatre group, Rangayan, and a leading figure in the experimental theatre of the 1960s.
She has worked in parallel cinema and studied theatre with Ebrahim Alkazi in Delhi and with Adi Marzban in Mumbai. Previously, she was awarded the 1975 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for excellence in Direction and in 1986, she won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Rao Saheb (1986).
META will also present awards in 13 competitive categories – Best Play, Best Director, Best Stage Design, Best Light Design, Best Innovative Sound Design, Best Costume Design, Best Actor in a Lead Role (Male), Best Actor in a Lead Role (Female), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Male), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Female), Best Original Script, Best Ensemble and Best Choreographer. This year’s final 10 nominations feature plays in Assamese, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam and Manipuri, as well as a non-verbal movement theatre production.
These plays explore varied subjects such as gender identity through Indian mythology, the machinations of the entertainment industry and how they treat their female leads, folk literature from Bengal, the balance between the female (prakriti) and male (purusha) energies, the politics of religion and the religion of politics and its division of society, the brutality against women by the Japanese imperialist army during World War II, reinterpreted Greek tragedies, German philosophy revisited and the flamboyant playing style of veteran Colombian goalkeeper – José René Higuita Zapata.
The jury members who will felicitate the winners in the varied categories include Amal Allana, renowned theatre director and former Chairperson of the National School of Drama; Lillete Dubey, film and theatre actor and theatre director; Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry, theatre director and professor of theatre at the Punjab University; Rajat Kapoor, film maker, actor, theatre director and writer; Ranjit Kapoor, theatre, film and television writer-director; and Shobha Deepak Singh, Indian cultural impresario, photographer, writer, classical dancer and the director of Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra.
In the previous years, the META Lifetime Achievement Award has been conferred to several stalwarts of Indian theatre, including Late Zohra Sehgal, the Late Badal Sarkar, the Late Khaled Chowdhary, Ebrahim Alkazi, Girish Karnard, the Late Heisnam Kanhailal, Ratan Thiyam and Arun Kakade.