Choreographer Sandip Soparrkar who was a part of the prestigious third Sharm El Sheikh International Theatre Festival for the Youth in Egypt as a jury member and is quite kicked about the experience.
Festival Heads Egyptian actress Wafaa El Hakim and director Mazen El Gharaway heard of the illustrated work Soparrkar has been doing all over the world through this international mythology based dance dramas and his National Excellence Award winning initiative “Dance for a Cause”. This made them get him on Jury panel for their theatre festival for the youth
“It’s been an honour and a wonderful experience.’’ Said Sandip. Describing his experience further at the festival as a jury member, Sandip said, ‘’I have judged many dance shows and festivals, but this was my first time as a jury for a theatre festival and the experience has been very memorable. Youngsters today have such amazing ideas and energy, it’s infectious. Meeting and interacting with the other jury members and understanding how theatre is portrayed in their country was fabulous.”
Sharm El Shaikh festival had plays from all across the world, including countries like Kuwait, Italy and sultan of Oman, Egypt , Tunisia and more.
Speaking of the festival Actress Wafaa El Hakim said, ‘’Most of the our plays were highly dramatic and this year the participants used lot of physical theatre, most plays were in Arabic or English and had the much added drama with some very interesting and unique way of lighting.”
Mr. Mazen El Gharabawy, President Sharm El Sheikh International Theatre festival for youth said, “It was amazing to have Mr Sandip at our festival because he was the first Indian artist who ever participated in our festival and also as our prestigious jury member.”
The winners were the play ‘The chronicles leading to madness’ from Kuwait and ‘Wooden Prison’ from Italy. Where as Egyptian actors Taha Khalifa and Iman Ghoneim were adjudged the best Male and female performers respectively.
The jury president was Mr Constantine Chiriac from Romania along with other renowned names from Theatre world like Dr Gonegal Abd El Kader from Morocco, Sonia Murcia from Spain , Kevin Rigdon from United States of America, Ali Elayyan from Jordan and Nora Amin from Germany along with Sandip Soparrkar from India.