About The Event
ACT Season 16
(February 22-28, 2026)
Various Venues in Delhi/NCR
The 16th edition of ACT – Atelier Campus Theatre Festival marks not just another year of performances but a reaffirmation of what theatre truly stands for: community, collaboration, and collective expression. ACT embraces the spirit of celebration—a celebration of voices, dissent, identities, stories, and the transformative power of coming together.
Atelier’s ACT Festival aka "Atelier’s Campus Theatre" Festival is the World’s Largest Campus Theatre fiesta. Started in 2007, this festival has witnessed more than 800 performances in the last 15 seasons.
In Season 16, we aim to achieve a bigger, better and diverse this year, from February 22-28, 2026.
Festival Curator
Kuljeet Singh
Festival Director
Mansi Grover
Festival Manager
Manjot Singh
Festival Advisor
Gaurav Suri
Name of the group: Masque
Name of the college : Hindu College
Synopsis of the play:
In a world crippled by overpopulation, governance has been surrendered to an all seeing artificial intelligence known as The System. Power no longer wears a human face. It rules as law, judge, and deity worshipped for its objectivity and trusted for its promise of balance. This dystopian society has been stripped of geopolitical borders and now is divided into numbered districts. Through ritualised sacrifice, the System maintains what it calls equilibrium: one life from every district, each year, chosen at random but intertwined with the world’s fate, so that humanity may endure. Our protagonist, a father: a quiet and devout believer in this order, lives with his young child in the shadow of a wife whose life has already been lost to the same machine he reveres. When the System selects his child for execution, by the father’s own hands, his world is shattered. Yet even in grief and shock, he doesn’t rebel. He searches for meaning, clinging to belief as his last refuge. As the grieving believer begins to decay, a cryptic figure named Cero emerges, offering a forbidden alternative: the System can be cheated, but only at the cost of another innocent life. Faced with a choice that pits personal love against collective obedience, the father must confront the lie of fairness, the violence of tradition, and the comfort of surrender. The man dissolves into his memories, guilt and conscience, and comes to a decision. He kills his own child. Not as an act of cruelty, but as an act of faith. A servant still, to The System and to humanity. After losing everything, the father is confronted with a final truth: Cero’s origins and The System’s dark truth. The technology was never built to save humanity, but to preserve the powerful. Its objectivity is a myth and the sacrifices were a shield for the elite. Given one last choice to expose this truth to the world, the father refuses. He chooses silence. He chooses pacifism. His existence fades into the long history of nameless obedience. When power demands devotion, is faith the final form of violence?
Trigger warning: This play contains visuals of murder and family trauma. Viewer discretion is advised
