Apart from the above, another recent festival organized by the NSD was the Porvottar Natya Samaroh which was held from 27th March to 10th April’08. The Festival showcased a total of 28 plays in a fortnight long period, and  sought to give representation to the creative talent that lies in the region, often latent, but vibrant and throbbing with potential nonetheless. Senior theatre personalities like Kanhailal, Ratan Thiyam, Dulal Roy and Ram Gopal Bajaj participated in the Festival, allowing for a synthesis of experience  and fresh talent. The plays dealt with a variety of subjects ranging from social issues like caste, gender, condition of the mentally challenged, exploitation in a feudal society and perspectives on suicide, to those of mythology and history and the themes covered a gamut of areas from the fantastic to the historical, from the romantic to the tragic, from the amusing to the disturbing.

While most performances  were in North-Eastern languages like Assamese, Manipuri, Mizo, Rabha, Garo and Nepali, there were also one each from Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu and Hindi.  Besides the linguistic variety, the presentational style and the issues dealt with in these plays offered a glimpse into the  wide range of theatre practice going on in our country. A few recent significant works from the South, West, East and North regions of the country were also added to give the festival a variety in terms of production styles and texts drawn from a variety of sources.