Bahuroopi, Mysuru – 2025

The Bahuroopi National Theatre Festival 2025, organised by Rangayana, Mysuru, was held from 14 to 19 January 2025 under the theme “Liberation: Social Justice – Movements and Theatre.” The six-day festival brought together multilingual theatre productions, seminars, film screenings, folk programmes, exhibitions and several other cultural activities. One of the major additions to this edition was the introduction of Children’s Bahuroopi, a dedicated theatre platform for children, for the first time.

The first Children’s Bahuroopi Festival was inaugurated by renowned actor and theatre personality Prakash Raj. The occasion highlighted the importance of recognising children as active participants in the present and creating spaces for their imagination, curiosity and expression. Rangayana Director Satish Tiptur, Ranga Samaja Member Shashidhar Bharighat, representatives from the Department of Kannada and Culture and education officials were also associated with the inaugural programme.

Within this special children's theatre platform, A Friend Beyond the Fence became an important presentation in Kalabhi's continuing festival journey. Directed by Shravan Heggodu, the production brings together live performance and puppetry in a distinctive theatrical form. Set against the backdrop of a Polish concentration camp during the Second World War, the play follows the friendship between two eight-year-old boys separated by barbed wire, while Tembo, a baby elephant puppet, becomes a powerful symbol of innocence within a world marked by violence and division.

One of the defining features of the production is its life-size elephant puppet and the visual language created through the collaboration between puppetry and live actors. Kalabhi describes the work as India’s first puppet-artist production featuring a life-size elephant puppet. This distinctive approach gives A Friend Beyond the Fence a theatrical identity that combines visual spectacle with an emotionally layered human story.

The wider Bahuroopi Festival provided a significant context for this presentation. According to the organisers, the 2025 festival attracted more than one lakh theatre enthusiasts, with around 1,200 artists participating in different events. The newly introduced children’s platform itself involved approximately 200 schoolchildren from different schools, reflecting the scale of the initiative and the importance given to children's engagement with theatre.

The significance of presenting A Friend Beyond the Fence in this context goes beyond its festival participation. The production brings themes of friendship, innocence and humanity into conversation with the realities of war, division and violence. By using puppetry and visual storytelling to approach such serious themes, the production creates a theatrical experience capable of engaging younger audiences while retaining the emotional and social depth of its subject.

For Kalabhi, Children’s Bahuroopi – Mysuru 2025 therefore became an important chapter in the festival journey of A Friend Beyond the Fence. The production, developed through Kalabhi’s exploration of large-scale puppetry and visual theatre, travelled to a major national theatre festival and became part of a newly created platform dedicated to children and young audiences.

The presentation of A Friend Beyond the Fence at Children’s Bahuroopi, Mysuru 2025, stands as another significant milestone in the production’s journey—bringing together visual imagination, puppetry and a deeply human story before a new generation of theatre audiences.