There’s a nip in the air, the season when Delhi all too briefly dons its cultural colours and playwrights vie for your attention with gusto. And you know that winter’s definitely here when the dates of one theatre festival collide with another.

The ongoing Atelier Youth Theater Week (AYTW) ends today but from December 3, Mandi House will host the Delhi Ibsen Festival with groups from China, Egypt and the Netherlands besides four Indian troupes interpreting Henrik Ibsen, one of Norway’s legendary playwrights. The 11-day-long festival shares calendar space with the Old World Theatre Festival which begins two days later and gives you a chance to catch up with Shabana Azmi, Farooque Shaikh and Satish Kaushik.

But first, catch some of Delhi’s budding campus actors in action at AYTW. The final day has a line-up of four plays, among them a black comedy called Gulguli Circus by Deen Dayal College. “It involves five clowns creating the universe. But the joke is on human beings whose greed is at the core of every evil, from nuclear arms to environmental degradation,” says director Lokesh Jain.

The Delhi Ibsen Festival, organised by Dramatic Art and Design Academy enters its second year. “China has a rich opera culture, so it is fitting that director Zhan Min interprets Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler through an opera. On the other hand, The Devil’s Ship , a play from Iran based on Lady from the Sea , unfolds on a black, slanted stage, strewn with sand and stones,” says Nissar Allana, director of the festival.

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