In January 1984, in a truly pioneering spirit, a group of theater enthusiasts of Indian origin established Natya Bharati, a 501(c)3 non-profit cultural organization dedicated to bringing the best of Indian theater to audiences in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Since its inception, Natya Bharati has staged over 100 productions, the majority of which have been in Hindi with some in English. It is the oldest such group in the United States.
Natya Bharati is committed to the unique guiding principle of involving people from various linguistic and geographic regions of India, thus drawing on the diversity, richness and cultural nuances of theater from the various regions. Over the years, many plays have been staged of renowned Indian and Indian origin playwrights such as P.L Deshpande, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad, Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar, Mahesh Dattani and many contemporary ones like Sujit Rasaf, Suneeta Misra, and Nishi Chawla.
Organization structure sustained for 39 years where Executive Committee was managed by a President for a three-years term, inducted as Board of Trustees once their term was over. An election was held to elect a new President with a team of 8 additional positions every three years. The link below represents all executive committees starting from 1984.
Over the past few years, the Board of Trustees (BoT) undertook a review of the existing organizational framework of Natya Bharati, its governance structure, and its efficacy in fulfilling its purpose, responding to the dramatic growth of the South Asian community and new generations of theatre enthusiasts. The review uncovered gaps that either existed in the original structure or had evolved over the years in several areas, including lack of a clearly defined finance and governance oversight role for the BoT, lack of clearly defined roles for some of the Executive Committee (EC) members, lack of effective communication between the BoT and EC, uneven engagement of the elected committee members during their term, resulting in few members having to shoulder all the responsibilities, and lack of term limits for BoT members.
In an attempt to address the gaps, the BoT developed the proposed reorganized structure for NB through iterative discussions with the Exceutive Committee and the General Body. The goal is to invigorate the organization and establish a structure that we believe will be more agile in its functioning and more inclusive in its composition. It reimagines NB as a collective of theatre enthusiasts who work together as equals can more effectively serve the South Asian Community as a leading theater group. Now, at the threshold of our 40th anniversary, we seek to ensure that the mission of NB as below, continues to be upheld.
As a reorganized theater collective, NB will realize its mission by producing its own plays, sponsoring theater festivals and plays by other theater groups, hosting workshops etc.
After a series of serious discussions, both internally as well as with the Executive Committee and the general body at large, we are pleased to present to you the new organizational structure described in this document.
Please traverse through the website pages to see past and current productions of Natya Bharati and other components.