Journey so far...

SAMAHAR Natya Gosthee was founded on 11th February, 1984 with its headquarter in Guwahati, Assam. After a long arduous journey of 34 years through the colourful road of theatre, today it is one of the most renowned and respectable amateur theatre groups of Assam. It was founded with the sole objective of presenting quality productions to the people. Today it is one of the most performing theatre groups with its shows scattered across the state having continuity in street and stage productions for the last more than three decades.

The group can boast of being the publisher of the first two (only) collections of street plays in Assamese language, containing as many as thirteen plays in total. It has also published three collections of stage plays. It has made its presence felt in All India Radio, Guwahati and DDK, Guwahati by dint of its productions in the two media. SAMAHAR has nearly 500 productions to its credit so far in different media, which include its performances in the 5th Bharat Rang Mahotsav (organized by NSD) in New Delhi in 2003, the Octave Festival in Madgaon, Goa in 2008 and the Tri-Nation Muktangan Nat Mahotsav in Kolkata in 1999. It is worth mentioning that most of the productions of the organisation are on the social problems like terrorism, superstition, corruption, communalism, flood havoc, crisis of folk culture, women empowerment and the like.

The Samahar’s Annual Brajanath Sharma Memorial Inter-State Drama Festival, held since 2007 in the hallowed memory of Brajanath Sharma, is a well-applauded venture and is obviously contributing significantly towards building a theatre movement in Assam.

The well-known theatre group has also formed the SAMAHAR Movie Club for screening acclaimed regional, national and international features as well as documentaries across the state. The aim is to screen some rare and excellent films mainly in schools, colleges and universities so that the younger generation gets a chance to see the works of the legends and gets inspired from them. This is completely a non-commercial and educational venture.

SAMAHAR has been organising various workshops on recitation, theatre and music in various schools in and around Guwahati. The main purpose of this endeavour is to help the student community in their overall development. The group’s activities in previous years also included a number of theatre workshops in its own premises. The immediate aim of the organisation is to complete an auditorium on its own land, which is an urgent need for the ‘SAMAHAR Drama School’, likely to be started within a short time.

Apart from its various cultural activities, SAMAHAR has always been at the forefront of various social causes. Since 2014, the group along with support from its well-wishers across the world has been visiting flood affected areas every year. Equipped with its minimum resources, SAMAHAR has stood by the victims in their hour of need and distributed relief materials, benefiting thousands of people.