Utpal Dutt

Utpal Dutt was a Bengali theatre director, playwright and film actor. He was born on 29 March 1929 at Barishal (now in Bangladesh), was educated at St Xavier's College, Calcutta, and died in Calcutta on 19 August 1993. He founded the Shakespeareans in 1947 and, after the Shakespeare company he toured with left India, renamed it the Little Theatre Group and began to perform in Bengali. In 1959 the group took over the Minerva Theatre on Beadon Street and went professional. He wrote 22 full-length plays and directed more than 60 productions.

Key moments

• 27 December 1965: he is arrested under the Preventive Detention Act on a warrant from the West Bengal government. His play Kallol, about the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946, had been playing to packed houses at the Minerva, and the Congress government of the state feared it could provoke anti-government protest. He is held for several months and then released on bail while filming The Guru (Upperstall, Wikipedia).
• 1969 onward: he regroups as the People's Little Theatre. His play Duhswapner Nagari is attacked, banned for sedition and staged in secret under other titles, and Barricade aims at Congress misrule in Bengal. The Telegraph's 1993 obituary says his play Tir embraced the Naxalite cause, which he later rejected.
• 1990: receives the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship for lifetime service to theatre (Wikipedia).
• 19 August 1993: dies in Calcutta.

What he is remembered for. Dutt is remembered as a pioneer of modern Indian political theatre, and also as a film actor in more than a hundred films, including Bhuvan Shome, for which he won a National Award as best actor, and Gol Maal and Agantuk.