Srinagar
Two artistes from Jammu and Kashmir have been conferred the Natsamrat Theatre Award 2020, The Tribune reported.
According to a report published in the newspaper The Tribune, Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee Mushtaq Kak from Jammu and Padma Shri Bansi Kaul from Srinagar were given the awards in different categories at the 12th Natsmarat Theatre Award function in New Delhi.
Newspaper The Tribune quoted Kak as having said he had been given the ‘Best Director Award’, while Padma Shri Bansi Kaul had been conferred the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’.
On the occasion, Kak said he had spent 10 years at Shri Ram Centre as a director and his close connection with Delhi had given him warmth and love, besides it had helped him come up with some of the great theatre productions.
The report said that Kak has been a regular observer, judge and coordinator to various national theatre festivals held in the country. He is one of the leading Indian theaterists whose three plays were screened and witnessed by the representatives of 80 countries at the Global Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi in 2017.
He was also one of the eminent members of the screening committee of the Theatre Olympiad 8, an international theatre festival organised by the culture department and the National School of Drama, it said.
Bansi Kaul was born in Srinagar and graduated from the National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi, in 1973. He started his career as a director with the NSD Repertory Company and was also a faculty at the school for many years. He formed his theatre group in 1984, said the report.
He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1995 and the Padma Shri in 2014. His most known performance is ‘Kehan Kabir’, which is based on the collective works of poet-Saint Kabir. He was conferred the Rashtriya Kalidas Samman for 2016-17, reported The Tribune.
