BySukant Deepak

January 28, 2020 (IANSlife) Well-known theatre person Sanjana Kapoor will receive the prestigious French honour of ‘Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) for her outstanding contribution to theatre.
 
The French Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, currently on an official India visit, will confer the insignia of the distinction on Kapur in a special investiture ceremony today at Residence of France in New Delhi.
 
Kapoor was born in an illustrious family of Indian and English theatre personalities – Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal. She debuted on screen with Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981) and played the leading actress in Hero Hiralal (1989). She also appeared in Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay (1988).
 
But she went on to dedicate herself fully to theatre, acting in plays and reviving the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, founded by her parents in tribute to Prithviraj Kapoor, and run, since 2012, by her brother, Kunal Kapoor. In 2012, she co-founded Junoon, an organisation dedicated to increasing the reach of theatre and the arts to wider audiences through innovative initiatives.
 
L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is a French government distinction, instituted in 1957 by the Ministry of Culture, and  is conferred, regardless of nationality, on persons who have distinguished themselves by their creativity in the fields of art or literature, or for their contribution to promoting the arts and literature in France and throughout the world. Some noted Indian recipients of this honour in the past include Bharti Kher, Shahrukh Khan, Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, Aishwarya Rai, Raghu Rai, Ebrahim Alkazi, Habib Tanveer, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Wendell Rodricks and Aruna Vasudev.

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Sukant Deepak can be contacted at sukant.d@ians.in