If you have ever seen Usha Uthup perform on stage, you must have also noticed that at the end of every show she makes it a point to introduce her band members and all the technicians. She is the only Indian artist to be doing this and that too through her entire ongoing career of 50 years.

“ We had been invited to a small function. The kinds you call a para (locality) function. The stage completely caved in and the blame obviously went to the man who had built it. None of us were thankfully on the stage when this happened but I thought that we should be thankful to God that we perform on stage every day and we have remained safe.

The builders of these stages have kept us safe. So instead of criticizing one for building a faulty stage we should laud many for building most of these perfectly.

That was when the seeds of Stagecraft Foundation and Awards were planted in my head,” said Usha Uthup.

Usha Uthup elaborated, “At an awards function it’s usually the stars, who walk away with the awards, and thank their family and the producers and directors. The people behind the camera are hardly mentioned.

I wanted to have an award function where they would be the stars, the winners.”

Usha Uthup came together with a group of like-minded people and the Stagecraft Foundation took off in 2014.

“Ultimately everything is about the show, the show must go on,” she said.