At the very outset I must honestly admit that I have no direct or indirect relation with our theatre .However ,I love the same and try to give a short outline of the same and at the same time I should also honestly admit that I am not at all familiar with the contemporary theatre.
I don't know whether in any country such huge number of talented actors were born. Girish Ghosh was the father of Bengali theatre and during his time a large number of actors and actresses appeared and contributed significantly for the stage like Dani babu, Amarendra Nath Datta, Ardhendu Sekhar Mustafi ,Noti Binodini etc.After the departure of Girish Ghosh Sisir Kumar Bhadduri took leading part for the development of the stage at the sacrifice of his service as a college teacher and he is regarded as the father of modern theatre.
During his time a good number of actors joined the stage like Ahindra Chowdhury , Chabi Biswas, Nirmalendu Lahiri , Naresh Mitra , Kanu Banerjee etc. This theatre is called professional theatre .In 1944 a drama had been staged written by Bijan Bhattacharya named "NABANNA" based on famine in 1943 in Bengal and the same was staged under the banner of IPTA,the cultural front of CPI and the same was staged in many places and earned immense popularity .
A concept of new theatre came into being named group theatre and after independence a historic incident took place .Maharshi Manoranjan Bhattacharya along with Sambhu Mitra formed a group for Bengali theatre named BAHURUPI in 1948 and they staged number of classic theateres including Raktakarabi in 1954 which brought a revolution in Bengali theatre at that time.They also staged various dramas written by Rabindranath Tagore.At that time many reputed actors joined stage like Utpal Datta ,Ganga pada Bose, Amar Ganguly ,Kumar Roy ,Debotosh Ghosh , Ajiesh Banerjee, Manoj Mitra ,Bibhash Chakraborty ,Rudra Prosad Sen Gupta. Though they belonged to different groups they were after good theatres. Out of the above names most of the actors are no more.
The golden era of Bengali theatre possibly is not in existence.