Biography

Shyamanand Jalan (13 January 1934 – 24 May 2010) 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 (One Day in Ashad) 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.As an actor in stage plays, he appeared as the don in Roland Joffe's 1992 film City of Joy. He also worked with parallel cinema directors. He acted in Mrinal Sen's television series, Tasveer Apni Apni, and later in Arohan by Shyam Benegal, Kahan Kahan Se Guzar Gaya by MS Sathyu, and Chokh (1982) by Utpalendu Chakrabarty.

He co-founded theatre group Anamika in 1955, impresario organisation Anamika Kala Sangam in 1967, and later in 1972, he left Anamika to form his own Padatik theatre group, of which he remained director for the rest of his life; Padatik Dance Center was launched in 1989, a school for Classical and Contemporary Dance in Kolkata. He received the 1972 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Direction, awarded by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama, and later remained the vice-chairman of the Akademi (1999–2004).