Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
Senior theatre artists in the heritage city of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, the capital of Marathwada, on Wednesday urged the municipal corporation to take the lead in promoting cultural activities. They suggested organising state-level Mayor’s theatre and one-act play competitions. The artists, who visited the municipal corporation for the first time, also offered several suggestions to mayor Sameer Rajurkar. He assured them that quality cultural programmes would certainly be organised in the city in the coming days.
On Wednesday afternoon, senior artists including Dilip Ghare, poet Prof. Dasu Vaidya, Mustajeeb Khan, Preshit Rudrawar, Mukund Golatgaonkar, Madan Mimrot, Satyajit Gaikwad, Sarang Takalkar, Sandeep Sonar, Yogita Talekar, Avinash Thigale, and Prashant Mhase met the mayor at the municipal corporation office. The municipal commissioner Amol Yedge was also present.
Ghare said that the municipal corporation needs to take initiative to keep the city’s theatre movement alive. While the corporation has privatised some auditoriums, the artists do not oppose it; however, they emphasised that reasonable rental charges should be fixed for local artists.
They also pointed out that local artists have inputs regarding auditoriums and cultural programmes, which cannot always be directly communicated to the mayor or the commissioner. Therefore, they recommended appointing a dedicated and competent cultural officer.
They further suggested restarting the mayor’s one-act play competition. Several colleges in the city have departments of theatre studies, and students from these institutions could voluntarily assist municipal schools in organising cultural programmes and staging plays. The Mayor assured that all suggestions would be considered and implemented.