`Staging` success acts!

Nipun Dharmadhikari’s short, yet impressive streak in theatre has quite a few surprises stacked up for future.

Varad Nighali Londonla is the first theatre play that had an influence on Nipun Dharmadhikari (24). In his formative years, Nipun always enacted bits of the play to his batch mates when his teachers were not in around.
In spite of excelling at academics, theatre continued to be Nipun's calling. Since the second day of junior college, the Pitti Hall (the cultural hall of BMCC) became the place where he learnt to literally breathe theatre. In 2003, Nipun got to perform for the first time in Purushottam Karandak through 'A Play within a Play' and ever since, there's been no looking back for him. After the competition, Nipun was introduced to a few cultural groups in Pune, where he got to do more of experimental theatre.
Dharmadhikari took a break for his standard 12 boards before getting back to action in 2005 by handling the charge of the college cultural group. He directed a radio play named "Phulachi Goshta" for Sumant in an inter college radio play competition, where his college team emerged victorious. It was in the same year that "Cycle," a play directed by Nipun for Purushottam Karandak, won BMCC the trophy after 23 long years. Nipun even played the role of the protagonist, a school boy named Ram, in the play. Since then, the play has gone on to have 26 shows in Maharashtra, winning 5 competitions.
While he still continued to direct super hit plays like "Lose Control" for cultural groups like Samanvay, Nipun realised that he would no longer have the platform that college competitions give him. Hence, with a motive of getting more exposure and reaching out to more audiences, Nipun and his friends started Naatak Company in 2008. Naatak Company went on to create plays like Geli Ekvees Varshe (directed by Abhay Mahajan), which not only won national level competitions like Thespo, but was also invited to Italy for a film festival in 2011.
The previous year has been quite a remarkable one for Nipun. Early in the year, Nipun got a call from Rahul Deshpande asking him to be a part of his latest musical "Sangeet Sanshay Kallo." Nipun feels honoured to have had the chance to work with an exponent of Deshpande's stature.
 On being asked to take a pick between acting and direction, Nipun responds, "I prefer directing. It comes more naturally to me. Having said that, I'm an actor first!"  During the course of time, Nipun has received appreciation from Nana Patekar, Atul Kulkarni and others from the Marathi theatre fraternity for his work. He was honoured with the prestigious "Damu Kenkere Fellowship" in 2011. Nipun's next direction, which opens on May 5, 2012, will be funded through the fellowship.

NOTABLE ACCOLADES
Nipun has recently directed a play named "Never Mind" which is all set to stage in auditoriums across the city in January. The play is a romantic comedy to which most of the youth will relate to. He is also working on converting a renowned Marathi book named "Raranga Dhang" into an audio book, for which the team has been selected.

--SWETA MANTRI