Vodafone Odean theatre festival to begin on Nov 21

Kolkata, Nov 12 (UNI) Vodafone Essar, one of the leading Cellular service providers in the country, today announced 'Vodafone Odean 2008', the eighth edition of its annual theatre festival in the city of joy.

The seven-day long extravaganza will kick off on November 21 with the inaugural ceremony. The first show will be organised the next day with a play by Girish Karnad entitled 'Wedding Album' which is a delightfully poignant love story set in a technologically advanced and globalised India.

Announcing 'Odean 2008', Sridhar Rao, CEO, Vodafone Essar East Limited said, the multilingual fest is set to enthral theatre lovers with plays from across the country in English, Hindi and Bengali.

Girish Karnads play will be followed by Rajat Kapoors comedy 'Hamlet- The Clown Prince', he informed.

Odean will also showcase two youth oriented plays called 'Onko' by Tin Can and 'Six Characters in search of an author' by the English department of Jadavpur University under the guidance of Professor Anand Lal to give a platform to the young artistes with eminent theatre personalities, he added.

For the first time the theatre fest will go beyond Kolkata to Siliguri with the play 'Babu-Kolkatar Mancha-Gaan' by prominent Bengali theatre artist Devajit Bandyopadhyay, Mr Rao said adding this is a presentation of theatre songs of the 19th and early 20th century when the Babu culture dominated and the nautch girls made a significant socio-cultural impact.

He maintained that Vodafone through various partnerships had been promoting art and culture in the country for close to a decade and ''Odean demonstrates our commitment to strengthen our relationship with the customers''.

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