Editor Dr Santanu Das, a graduate of the NSD, is presently working at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, as an associate professor of theatre design. He started his career as a director & designer in 1990 with the play Atha Dar Pal Katha. Later, he has directed Power of Darkness, Evam Indrajit, Romeo Jeannette, Raising in the Sun, Manu(sh) shi, Oidipous Turranos, Ghare Baire, and many more. In 2015, he jointly directed an Indo-French production named Crossing with Aude Maréshal at Mondeville, France. He has presented papers at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, in the Elsinore Conference at Helsingør, Denmark, and in the 14th Prague Quadrennial at Prague, Czech Republic. His productions have been staged in various countries like France, Poland, Czech Republic, Israel, Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh. He was awarded a silver medal for direction in the 4th International Experimental Theatre Festival, Hanoi, Vietnam, for his milestone production Macbeth Mirror, based on Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Editor Debesh Chattopadhyay has been working in the field of theatre for the last 33 years. As the director of the theatre group Laketown Sreebhumi Sansriti, Kolkata, he directed many milestone productions like Winkle Twinkle, Devi Sarpamasta and Phyataru. He has also directed plays for intimate and site- specific theatre. He has completed a senior fellowship on Cognitive Neuroscience and Theatre. The Week magazine felicitated him as one of the 'fifty emerging stars of India' in 2003. Debesh has been honoured twice by the Paschimbanga Natya Akademi as the best director. He got many awards for feature film Natoker Moto (Like a Play) in 2015. Currently he is working on Natyashastra.
Satu Sen was the first director of the National School of Drama (NSD). In those days, the NSD had been called the National School of Drama and Asian Theatre Institute. In the year 1959, Dr P. V. Rajamannar and Mrs Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, respectively the chairperson and co-chairperson of the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), had invited him to Madras (now Chennai).
They had requested him to step in as the director of the newly established National School of Drama and Asian Theatre Institute in New Delhi. He joined the institute gladly. In his memoirs he shared his working experience at the NSD. In his words, "On two occasions during my stay here, I was appointed as a juror to nominate the candidates for the Academy's Theatre Award. I was given the grave duty of being the director of the newly established institutions. My job included the role of the administrator, taking regular classes, teaching the art of acting, set-design, light projection and arts and aesthetics to the students. I had erected several large models various stages. Probably they have been conserved in some room of the School. I had put my efforts in collecting information about the various forms of acting from the various parts of India. I was very keen on researching about the forms of Bangladeshi jatra." From his words we can imagine what his dream about the NSD was. Unfortunately, due to some difference of opinions with the SNA authority at Delhi, he left the NSD in 1961.
Partha Sen, Satu Sen's son, told us regarding his father, "My father didn't pay any heed to the material world. Some day when he was affluent, he didn't bother to spend hastily. The very next day he walked down 5 kilometres without hesitation. His stoic approach towards life has also inflicted us. He had an indifferent approach towards both the comfort and the struggle of life. We have inherited this trait from him, so hurdles of life do not affect me even now, not even the least." Just think about a person who got a scholarship to study engineering in America and reaching there left his engineering course and scholarship to study theatre! Without any financial help from his family, he completed his theatre course; working at a restaurant and a salon. From his own memoirs: "He made provisions in that hotel for me to have breakfast and dinner and for washing the dishes during the night, as well as a job of polishing shoes in a salon. Other than that, I would shovel the snow from the streets and earn some money. So, just like that, I would go to the school and theatre during the morning and evening and then spend the nights at the hotel and salon.
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