Seven cultural picks across Kolkata for the last week of December

Kolkata hosts its first candlelight concert with JHILMIL RAAT, featuring Chandrabindoo at G.D. Birla Sabhagar, 3 pm onwards on Dec 27. Set in a warm, glowing ambience, the show reimagines the band’s well-known songs in an intimate format. Expect familiar humour, nostalgia and storytelling, presented in a calmer, festive setting.

Comedian Shreeja Chaturvedi brings her new stand-up set, Pasandeeda Aurat, to Kala Kunj Auditorium, 7.30 pm onwards on Dec 27. Sharper and more irritable than before, she turns her gaze on family, affection and personal history. The set is self-aware, biting and deliberately uncomfortable, with Chaturvedi performing disdain as both shield and punchline.

Tall Tales hosts RISH for his first-ever live performance in Kolkata, 9 pm onwards on Dec 27. The singer-composer behind Barbaad takes the stage with raw vocals and stripped-down energy. This late-night set promises familiarity without polish, offering fans a rare chance to hear a widely streamed voice in an unfiltered, live setting.

Appurv Gupta returns to the city with a new stand-up show at The Cult by The Bikers Cafe on Dec 28. Known for observational humour rooted in middle-class life, Gupta revisits family dynamics, travel chaos and everyday frustrations. The set starting from 5 pm stays clean and accessible, built on storytelling that feels lived-in rather than exaggerated.

Angina Jure Bhor stages a quiet but urgent reflection on the loss of cultural spaces, performed at the Academy of Fine Arts, 6 pm onwards on Dec 28. Through a meeting between a young researcher and an ageing theatre owner, the play explores memory, decay and devotion to performance spaces that shaped generations of artists and audiences.

Item returns to The Urban Theatre Project with a winter performance led by Zenia Fauxbia Darling 7.30 pm onwards on Dec 29. Revisiting the venue where it first made its mark last December, the evening blends drag, drama and dance. It is designed as a social night out, inviting audiences to stay, move and participate.

The play Bhanu unfolds at the Academy of Fine Arts, 6.30 pm onwards on Dec 29, examining desire, displacement and quiet resentment within a rural household. As an ageing professor plans to sell ancestral land, long-suppressed tensions surface among those who depend on it. The production focuses on emotional restraint rather than spectacle.

For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.