Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Kabir Khan, Radhika Apte, Anand L Rai and other attended Day 4 of Khidkiyaan Theatre Festival

Nawazuddin Siddiqui who was the special guest along with Kabir Khan, Anand L Rai and Radhika Apte on the day…

Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Kabir Khan, Radhika Apte, Anand L Rai, Khidkiyaan Theatre Festival

Nawazuddin Siddiqui who was the special guest along with Kabir Khan, Anand L Rai and Radhika Apte on the day 4 of the ongoing Khidkiyaan Theatre Festival organized by Mukesh Chhabra Casting Co. in Mumbai, spoke about his earlier days of theatre in Delhi and eventful journey as an actor.

While sharing an interesting anecdote about how Mukesh and he started their journey together with theatre and landed in Mumbai Nawazuddin said, “Mukesh and I did theatre together for many years in Delhi and after a point we started wondering what to do next. We had no money to even survive. At that moment, I thought, if we have to die hungry in Delhi, then it’s better that we should do it in Mumbai. Who knows our destiny might change! And that’s how we have landed here.”

The Bajrangi Bhaijaan actor completely won over the fans as soon as he came on stage. The excited young fans started mouthing his film dialogues and also requested him to say dialogues from his recent films.

The evening which saw a huge turn out of theatre lovers, started with a delightful music performance by Pratul Joshi followed by a lovely performance by Mukesh Chhabra’s father T.C. Chhabra who is an amateur singer. The senior Chhabra sang old Hindi melodies and charmed the young audience.

Manav Kaul recited one of his poems. Renowned theatre personality, Kumud Mishra spoke about his love for theatre and narrated his life journey in a very humorous way.

Himanshu Kohli & Prashant Kumar’s play Blackbird starring Swanand Kirkire and Salony Luthra was a huge hit among the audiences, who turned up in large numbers to watch the play.

Also present at the event were Neetu Chandra, Deepak Dobriyal, Ashwini Iyer, Rajshri Deshpande, Varun Sharma and Shweta Tripathi.

The first edition of the non-ticketed fest is being held at Sathaye College. Mumbai from January 13-17, 2016

Kabir Khan said, It’s a very interesting platform that Mukesh has created and theatre definitely needs to be supported in a big way. Unfortunately, in our times Bollywood seems to have submerged every other cultural activity, so in that context it’s very important to keep this alive. If Mukesh can make this into a travelling theatre festival, it will be superb. In Bombay and Delhi we already have a vibrant theatre culture, but in other cities also we need that and we all will be there to support him.

Anand L. Rai said, I don’t know who else getting advantage from this Festival but I surely am getting great advantage, I get to connect with a young generation of actors and talent and it’s a learning experience for me because as a director what I need badly is good actors. It’s a great initiative; I look forward to these things.

Radhika Apte said, This initiative is very crucial because theatre has a limited reach, it has its limited audience and it’s very difficult to promote it beyond that, whereas film has a lot of masses attached to it so this is a great amalgamation of the two and it’s a great platform where a lot of film stars are coming and promoting it and Mukesh being such a huge celebrity in the industry, promoting theatre which also is his love, it’s absolutely commendable. I’m very happy to be here and be a part of this.