The Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards 2015: Ten Years of Remarkable Theatre

When one thinks of META (or, the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards), a lot of things come to mind; its uniqueness, its firm place in the world of recognized and rewarded theatre and its talented and renowned team and associations are just a few of these. META prides itself on being the first festival of its kind that recognizes, seeks out and celebrates theatre which may or may not be a part of the mainstream theatre culture of Indias metropolitan cities.

The festival culminates in a mega Awards Night in the end, which is attended by theatre lovers and aficionados, in a grand celebration of Theatre. Encouraging all forms of theatre across its full spectrum, The Mahindra Group, through META, aims to increase awareness and appreciation of Indian theatre, making it the only national platform for recognizing and rewarding theatre! META provides a concrete platform to celebrate and promote theatres varied elements like playwriting, set design, costume and light design, direction and performance.

So after nine years of META, what makes 2015 special? We are officially entering the 10th year of the prestigious META festival! After a glorious decade of plays, productions, awards and jubilation, this is going to be our best year yet.

This year, we crossed several milestones and set new heights for ourselves! Over the past ten years we have received 1,947 plays, 13 languages have been nominated (English, hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Bengali, Assamese, Manipuri, Kashmiri, French, Tamil, Kannada, Garo), nominations have hailed from 13 cities and 12 states (Guwahati, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Pondicherry, Thrissur, Kochi, Delhi, Bangalore, Bihar, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Manipur) and there have been 109 award winners! We have also had around 600 artists performing! Another achievement that we pride ourselves on is that around 90 theatre groups who have been nominated have benefitted from META, helping us help them! Another interesting fact is that Delhi has made a great comeback this year, with TWO plays being selected from the city.

We are still 15 days away from the opening of our festival and exciting developments have already propelled METAs 10th year into an exciting league of its own! We cannot wait for the next two weeks and then the festival itself and hope to see YOU there, making history with us!

METAs Creative Director is Mr. Ravi Dubey, and the organizers are Teamwork Productions.