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The first Bengali theatre was established as early as 1795. Russian Indologist Gerasim Lebedev is credited to have founded it. Prasanna Kumar Tagore established the first Indian owned Bengali theatre in 1831, named the Hindu Theatre.
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The first Bengali theatre was established as early as 1795. Russian Indologist Gerasim Lebedev is credited to have founded it. Prasanna Kumar Tagore established the first Indian owned Bengali theatre in 1831, named the Hindu Theatre.
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Utpal Dutta was an Indian actor, director, and writer-playwright. He was primarily an actor in Bengali theatre, where he became a pioneering figure in Modern Indian theatre, when he founded the "Little Theatre Group" in 1949. This group enacted many English, Shakespearean and Brecht plays, in a period now known as the "Epic theatre" period, before it immersed itself completely in highly political and radical theatre. His plays became an apt vehicle for the expression of his Marxist ideologies, visible in socio-political plays such as Kallol (1965), Manusher Adhikar, Louha Manob (1964), Tiner Toloar and Maha-Bidroha. He also acted in over 100 Bengali and Hindi films in a career spanning 40 years, and remains most known for his roles in films such as Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969), Satyajit Ray’s Agantuk (1991), Gautam Ghose’s Padma Nadir Majhi (1993) and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's breezy Hindi comedies such as Gol Maal (1979) and Rang Birangi (1983). He also did the role of a sculptor, Sir Digindra Narayan, in the episode Seemant Heera of Byomkesh Bakshi on Doordarshan in 1993, shortly before his death.
Hare School is one of the oldest schools in Kolkata, India, teaching grades one to twelve under the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education. It is a state government-administered boys school and was established by the Scottish watch-maker, David Hare. The establishment date is not agreed upon, but the official year of establishment is 1818. Thus the school is declared as the oldest western type school in Asia. The school is situated opposite the Presidency University, and is also adjacent to the University of Calcutta and Hindu School. The combined campuses of the Hare School and Presidency College is one of the largest in Kolkata.
Jatra is a popular folk-theatre form of Odia theatre, Bengali theatre, spread throughout most of Odia, Bengali speaking areas of the Indian subcontinent, including Bangladesh and Indian states of Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Tripura As of 2005, there were some 55 troupes based in Calcutta's old Jatra district, Chitpur Road, and all together, jatra is a $21m-a-year industry, performed on nearly 4,000 stages in West Bengal alone, where in 2001, over 300 companies employed over 20,000 people, more than the local film industry and urban theatre.
Girish Chandra Ghosh was a Bengali actor, director, and writer. He was largely responsible for the golden age of Bengali theatre. He cofounded the Great National Theatre, the first Bengali professional theatre company in 1872, wrote nearly 40 plays and acted and directed many more, and later in life became a noted disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.
Bengali theatre primarily refers to theatre performed in the Bengali language. Bengali theatre is produced mainly in West Bengal, and in Bangladesh. The term may also refer to some Hindi theatres which are accepted by the Bengali people.
Sombhu Mitra was an Indian film and stage actor, director, playwright, reciter and an Indian theatre personality, known especially for his involvement in Bengali theatre, where he is considered a pioneer. He remained associated with the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) for a few years before founding the Bohurupee theatre group in Kolkata in 1948. He is most noted for films like Dharti Ke Lal (1946), Jagte Raho (1956), and his production of Rakta Karabi based on Rabindranath Tagore's play in 1954 and Chand Baniker Pala, his most noted play as a playwright.
Jorasanko is a neighbourhood of North Kolkata, in Kolkata district, West Bengal, India. It is so called because of the two (jora) wooden or bamboo bridges (sanko) that spanned a small stream at this point.
Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedev, also spelled Herasim Steppanovich Lebedeff, was a Russian adventurer, linguist, pioneer of Bengali theatre, translator, musician and writer. He was a pioneer of Indology.
Badal Sircar, also known as Badal Sarkar, was an influential Indian dramatist and theatre director, most known for his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s and taking theatre out of the proscenium and into public arena, when he transformed his own theatre company, Shatabdi as a third theatre group. He wrote more than fifty plays of which Evam Indrajit, Basi Khabar, and Saari Raat are well known literary pieces. A pioneering figure in street theatre as well as in experimental and contemporary Bengali theatre with his egalitarian "Third Theatre", he prolifically wrote scripts for his Aanganmanch performances, and remains one of the most translated Indian playwrights. Though his early comedies were popular, it was his angst-ridden Evam Indrajit that became a landmark play in Indian theatre. Today, his rise as a prominent playwright in 1960s is seen as the coming of age of Modern Indian playwriting in Bengali, just as Vijay Tendulkar did it in Marathi, Mohan Rakesh in Hindi, and Girish Karnad in Kannada.
Debaki Bose (1898–1971), also known as Debaki Kumar Bose, was an Indian director, writer, and actor who is recognized for his contribution in Hindi as well as Bengali cinema. He was born on 25 November 1898 in Akalposh,, Burdwan, Bengal Presidency, British India. He died on 17 November 1971 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. He is known for his innovative use of sound and music in Indian Cinema. He worked first under the banner of British Dominion Films of Dhiren Ganguly and later with Pramathesh Barua's Barua Pictures and finally he joined New Theatres banner in 1932. He started his own production company, Debaki Productions, in 1945.
Jamshedji Framji Madan, professionally known as J. F. Madan, was an Indian theatre and film magnate who was one of the pioneers of film production in India, an early exhibitor, distributor and producer of films and plays. He accumulated his wealth on the Parsi theatre district scene in Bombay in the 1890s where he owned two theatre companies. He moved to Calcutta in 1902 where he founded Elphinstone Bioscope Company, and began producing and exhibiting silent movies including Jyotish Sarkar's Bengal Partition Movement in 1905. He expanded his empire considerably after acquiring rights to Pathé Frères films. He produced Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra in 1917 and Bilwamangal in 1919. Satyavadi Raja Harishchandra was the first feature film to be shot in Calcutta. Elphinstone merged into Madan Theatres Limited in 1919 which brought adapted many of Bengali's most popular literary works to the stage. Madan Theatres was a major force in Indian theatre throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Nitin Bose was an Indian film director, cinematographer and screenwriter of the nation's film industry. He was born in Calcutta and died in the same city. In the 1930s and early 1940s, he worked with New Theatres, who made bilingual movies: in both Bengali and Hindi. Later, he moved to Bombay and directed under the banners of Bombay Talkies and Filmistan.
Bengali cinema, also known as Tollywood, refers to the Indian Bengali language film industry based in the Tollygunge region of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Toollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932. It was a historically important film industry, at one time the centre of Indian film production. The Bengali film industry is known for producing many of Indian cinema's most critically acclaimed global Parallel Cinema and art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining prominence at the Indian National Film Awards as well as international acclaim.
Premankur Atorthy (1890–1964) was an Indian novelist, journalist, and film director. He was involved in Hindi and Bengali cinema.
Shyamanand Jalan was a Kolkata-based Indian theatre director, and actor. He is credited for the renaissance period of modern Indian theatre and especially the Hindi theatre in Kolkata from the 1960s to 1980s. He was the first to perform modernist Mohan Rakesh, starting with Ashadh Ka Ek Din in 1960 and in the coming years bridged the gap between Hindi theatre and Bengali theatre, by mounting Hindi productions of works by Bengali playwrights, like Badal Sircar's Evam Indrajit (1968) and Pagla Ghora (1971), which in turn introduced Sircar to rest of the country. In 2005, he directed his first and only film Eashwar Mime Co., which was an adaptation of Dibyendu Palit's story, Mukhabhinoy, by Vijay Tendulkar.
Tripti Mitra was a popular Indian actress of Bengali theatre and films, and wife of Sombhu Mitra, noted theatre director, with whom she co-founded pioneering theatre group Bohurupee in 1948. She has acted in films like Jukti Takko Aar Gappo and Dharti Ke Lal.
Shaoli Mitra [alternatively spelt as Shaonli Mitra ; c. 1948 – 16 January 2022) was an Indian Bengali theatre and film actress, director, and playwright. She played the role of Bangabala in Ritwik Ghatak's Jukti Takko Aar Gappo. She is the daughter of Sombhu Mitra and Tripti Mitra, who were also theatre personalities.
Shekhar Chatterjee (1924–1990) was an Indian actor and film director.
Natya Vidya Mandir, a theatre school, and its amateur theatre troupe Natmandal from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India had heavily influenced new Gujarati theatre. Established in 1949, it trained many theatre people and produced classic, modern and experimental plays in its twenty years of existence.