1999-2009 1st BRM: The first ever all-Indian theatre festival, Bharat Rang Mahotsav 1999, opened on 18 March in New Delhi, with staging of
Girish Karnad's play
Nagamandala (Hindi) directed by
Amal Allana. Held during the tenure
Ram Gopal Bajaj as NSD Director, the festival also featured Calcutta-based
Nandikar group's solo act
Meghnad Badh Kavya (Bengali) written by
Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Girish Karnad's
Agni aur Barkha (Hindi) directed by
Prasanna,
Ajneya's
Uttar Priyadarshi (Manipuri) directed by
Ratan Thiyam and
Himmat Mai (Hindi), an adaptation of
Brecht's
Mother Courage, and plays in several Indian languages, including Tamil, Malayalam, Assamese, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Dogri and Bhojpuri. A silent performance of Shakespeare's Othello, with only a few "sounds" in Arabic, directed by Teofik Jebali from
Tunisia was only foreign entry.
4th BRM: The 4th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, was inaugurated by
Pandit Ravi Shankar on 16 March 2002, and featured 126 dramas in more than 20 languages, and plays from five other countries, including Korea, Bangladesh, Germany, Israel and Mauritius. The focus of the festival was on theatre from
West Bengal and the
North East, showcased in four productions from
Manipur, including
Bhoot Amusung (Devil and the Mask) directed by L Dorendra, five from Assam with 'Hamlet' by Dulal Roy and nine plays from West Bengal.
Nagaland, showcased its dances, and
Nidhali with young dancers under NSD graduate Rabijita Gogoi, as part of an NSD extension programme, finally
Mizoram presented
Zanriah El Hmain by Siddharth Chakraborty. The plays were staged at eight venues in and around NSD, and the festival concluded on 8 April, with
Ratan Thiyam's presentation of
Kalidasa's epic poem
Ritusamharam.
7th BRM: Seventh Bharat Rang Mahotsav held in January 2005, in New Delhi, was marked by veteran theatre director,
Mohan Maharishi's breakthrough Hindi play, "Ho Rahega Kuch Na Kuch" inspired by
Marsha Norman's 1983 English play, "
'Night, Mother".
8th BRM: Eighth Bharat Rang Mahotsav (2006) showcased 60 plays from all over India, and also from Asia and the Arab world. A three-day international seminar titled "Theatre in Turmoil" was inaugurated by
Richard Schechner, a theatre scholar and director, participated by theatre directors, scholars, critics and designers from China, Japan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Korea and India.
9th BRM: Ninth Bharat Rang Mahotsav opened at
Siri Fort Auditorium on 6 January 2007 with a performance by
Sasha Waltz, the dancer-cum-choreographer from Germany, and featured the 52 performances, 13 from Australia, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Germany, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Nepal, Poland, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Uzbekistan, and 39 Indian productions including tribute production, theatre director
Alyque Padamsee's play "Macbeth", and choreographer Narendra Sharma's "Mukhantar and Conference". The International dance theatre showcased works of Leszek Bzdyl, Beatrice Jaccard and Peter Schelling, also Indian dancers and choreographers like
Maya Krishna Rao,
Padmini Chettur, Geeta Chandran and Veenapani Chawla. The "Satellite Festival" was held at Kolkata, from 12 and 20 January. during performance at 2008 festival
10th BRM: In 2008, when NSD celebrated its golden jubilee the festival also saw a gathering of its alumni from all over the country, and from Bangladesh, Nepal and Mauritius. The festival was on 3 January inaugurated by Delhi Chief Minister,
Sheila Dikshit in the presence of theatre personality,
Ebrahim Alkazi at
Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi. The opening performance was "Prologue", the first part of
Ratan Thiyam's "Manipur Trilogy" and in all the festival featured 76 productions, 57 from India and 19 from abroad stretched over 17 days. 26 productions also travelled to
Mumbai for the "Satellite Festival" organised, from 6 to 17 January, as it showcased plays of NSD graduates, including Ratan Thiyam's Prologue, Bansi Kaul (Aranyadhipati Tantiya), Neelam Mansingh Chowdhury (The Suit), Sanjay Upadhyay (Harsingar), Baharul Islam (Akash), Mohan Maharishi (Dear Bapu)) and M K Raina (Stay Yet Awhile).
11th BRM: The 11th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, was inaugurated by Jawhar Sircar, Union Secretary for Culture, on 7 January 2009 at Kamani Auditorium, with theatre personality
Zohra Sehgal, as the guest of honour, and opened with the performance of the Marathi play
"Awagha Rang Ekachi Zaala". The festival focused on the productions by young directors, thus the included plays are collaborative works, based on texts, adaptations and also plays developed through training and workshops, in all it featured 65 plays, 51 from India and 13 international productions, played across 7 venues.
2010 - present 12th BRM: The 2010 Festival, featured close to 90 plays, including 13 international productions, and productions by theatre veterans, Ratan Thiyam's "When we Dead Awaken" and S. Ramanujam's "Veriattam". The festival highlighted the role of music in theatre, through a segment titled
Natya Naad, featuring trademark songs of various parts of India and of various theatre personalities, and performances based on the music in the works of
B.V. Karanth,
Bhaskar Chandavarkar,
K. N. Panikkar and
IPTA music. It also included Parwaz, a puppet theatre group from
Kabul,
Afghanistan with 'The Wolf and the Goat' and 'The Hedgehog and the Rabbit', a troupe from Pakistan presenting the
Urdu version of
Kalidas's epic
Sanskrit play
Shakuntala, plus from
Israel, a clown show titled 'Odysseus Chaoticus'. In 2010, the "showcase city" was
Bhopal, the capital of
Madhya Pradesh, where a nine-day theatre festival part of the Bharat Rang Mahotsav was inaugurated by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, showcasing 15 plays national and international plays in Bengali, Malayalam, Manipuri and Kannada as well as English, French and Nepali languages hosted at Ravindra Bhawan and
Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal. With highlight being 'Umrao Jaan', 'Quick Death' and
Ibsen's '
A Doll's House' in Nepali, and "The Doorway," performed by Jyoti Dogra, who also performed the play in Delhi Festival as well. Apart from the plays, the festival also hosted a tribute exhibition dedicated to life, works and theatre of
B.V. Karanth and
Habib Tanvir.
13th BRM: The 2011 festival, showcased 82 plays from across the world, three photographic exhibitions, an Asia-Pacific theatre showcase and new media theatre, from 7 to 22 January. The festival opened with an Assamese adaptation of
Habib Tanvir's
Charandas Chor directed by Anup Hazarika, a NSD graduate, and a special section on theatre personality
Shyamanand Jalan, other plays were
Girish Karnad's
Bikhre Bimb, Dharamveer Bharti's
Suraj ka Satwaan Ghoda and
Henrik Ibsen's
Lady of the Sea (Sagar Kanya),
Alexander Pushkin's
Little Big Tragedies and
Rabindranath Tagore's
Visarjan. 22 foreign productions from 20 countries were also part of the festival, this included Beaumarchais' opera
The Barber of Seville,
In Viva, a dance piece, a mime performance
Silent Words, by Laurent Decol. From Latin America the festival featured
Santa Maria de Iquique: Revenge of Ramon, a puppet performance from
Pueta Peralta (Chile),
En un Sol Amarillo (Bolivia) and
Muare (Argentina). Apart from this two live (interactive) video theatre projects were new features in the festival, "The Garbage Project", about garbage problem in cities and "Social Gaming" on the impact of internet on human lives. The Contemporary dance theatre, section of festival had productions by Nora Amin from Egypt, Wendy Jehlen from the US and Min Tanaka and Aki Takahashi from Japan. The festival was spread across eight venues in the Delhi, also travelled to Chennai 11–19 January.
14th BRM: The 2012 festival also marked the 150th birth anniversary of poet
Rabindranath Tagore, thus the festival opened with the performance of Tagore's,
The King of Dark Chamber or
Raja directed by
Ratan Thiyam of
Chorus Repertory Theatre from Manipur. This was followed by 14 productions of his works, in all 96 productions including 16 foreign plays, performed across 11 venues in Delhi from 8–22 January 2012. The parallel festival city for the year was Amritsar, Punjab.{{cite web
18th BRM: the 2016 Festival was held in 4 satellite cities apart from Delhi -
Jammu,
Bhubaneshwar,
Trivandrum and
Ahmedabad. ==Venue==