Children’s Bahuroopi, Mysuru – 2025

The Bahuroopi National Theatre Festival 2025 was held from 14 to 19 January 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. A significant addition to the 2025 edition was the introduction of a separate Children’s Bahuroopi Festival for the first time.

The Children’s Bahuroopi Festival was inaugurated on 16 January 2025 at Kalamandira, Mysuru, by renowned multilingual actor and theatre personality Prakash Raj. The inaugural programme was attended by Rangayana Director Satish Tiptur, Ranga Samaja Member Shashidhar Bharighat, Joint Director of Kannada and Culture V.N. Mallikarjunaswamy, DDPI Javaregowda and Deputy Director Dr. M.D. Sudarshan.

As part of this inaugural edition of Children’s Bahuroopi, “Mogli” was presented at Kalamandira through the collaboration of Dhamani Theatre, Kundapura and Kalabhi Children’s Theatre, Mangaluru. Contemporary press coverage recorded that the production was well received by the audience, making it a meaningful presentation within the newly introduced children's theatre platform.

For Kalabhi, this presentation was part of the continuing journey of Mowgli as a children’s theatre production. Kalabhi's own documented timeline records “Mowgli – The Jungle Book” as one of the professional children's theatre productions developed through ARALU 2023. The production continued its journey and was subsequently listed in 2024 as “Mowgli | Kaadu Beedina Kate”, a children's theatre re-production. Its presentation at Children’s Bahuroopi in 2025 therefore became another significant stage in the production's evolving journey.

The significance of this participation goes beyond a single performance. Kalabhi's approach to children's theatre has sought to view children not merely as spectators, but as active participants in a creative process involving imagination, performance, movement, collective learning and artistic expression. Mowgli became an important representation of this practice when it travelled from Kalabhi's children's theatre journey to a major theatre platform in Mysuru.

The larger Bahuroopi Festival itself attracted more than one lakh theatre enthusiasts, according to the organisers, with around 1,200 artists participating across its various programmes. The newly introduced children's stage involved approximately 200 schoolchildren from different schools, further highlighting the scale and importance of the platform on which Mowgli was presented.

For Kalabhi Children’s Theatre, Children’s Bahuroopi – Mysuru 2025 was therefore not merely another performance. It was an important moment in which a children's theatre production developed through Kalabhi's artistic practice found a place within a major national theatre festival and, significantly, within its first dedicated platform for children's theatre.

The presentation of Mowgli at Children’s Bahuroopi, Mysuru, remains an important chapter in the production's festival journey and a memorable milestone in the continuing journey of Kalabhi Children’s Theatre.