Nandikar

Nandikar (Bengali: নান্দীকার) is a theatre group in India. The group has its headquarters in Kolkata in the state of West Bengal, but works around the world.

Nandikar's story begins on June 29, 1960, when Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and Asit Bandyopadhyay, along with a collection of committed young theatre persons, broke away and formed the group, which consisted of Ajoy Ganguly, Satyan Mitra, Dipen Sengupta, later joined by Keya Chakraborty, Bibhas Chakraborty, and Rudraprasad Sengupta.

The group's early productions were mainly adaptations of non-Indian plays, like Natyakarer Sandhane Chhati Charitra (Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author), Manjari Amer Manjari (Chekhov's Cherry Orchard), Jokhan Eka (Arnold Wesker's Roots), Sher Afgan (Pirandello's Henry IV) and Tin Poyshar Pala (Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera). They also performed Rabindranath Tagore's Char Adhyaya.

In the late 1970s, first Asit Bandopadhyay and then Ajitesh Bandopadhyay left the group. With Rudraprasad Sengupta as the main director, a new era started, and Nandikar turned from a pure performance-oriented theatre group to an organisation with a wide range of projects, including the annual National Theatre Festival.

Among the group's present actresses and actors are Swatilekha Sengupta, who starred in Satyajit Ray's movie Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) (1984) and Roland Joffé's City of Joy (1992), Goutam Halder, (he has left the group and formed a new one, initially becoming its director), Debshankar Halder, Sohini Sengupta Halder, who acted in Aparna Sen's movie Paromitar Ek Din (2000), and Rudraprasad Sengupta himself. Besides acting in Nandikar productions, he has also played in Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993).

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Wikipedia