Badal Sircar (15 July 1925 – 13 May 2011), 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 founded his own theatre company,
Shatabdi in 1976. He wrote more than fifty plays of which
Ebong 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 (courtyard stage) performances, and remains one of the most translated Indian playwrights. Though his early comedies were popular, it was his angst-ridden
Ebong Indrajit (And 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.