The Story
OrganizerThe Nandikar National Theatre Festival is organised by Nandikar, a Kolkata theatre group founded on 29 June 1960 by Ajitesh Bandopadhyay, Asit Bandopadhyay and a group of fellow theatre practitioners; the group's logo was designed by filmmaker Satyajit Ray. After both founders left the group in the 1970s, Rudraprasad Sengupta, who had joined Nandikar in 1961 and won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1980, took over as principal director and broadened Nandikar's work beyond production and performance alone into a wider range of theatre-education and outreach projects. The National Theatre Festival grew out of Nandikar's 25th (silver jubilee) anniversary celebrations in 1984; the positive reception it received led the group to continue it as an annual event. Held each year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata between 16 and 25 December, the festival's stated twin objectives are to promote cultural integration across India and to give theatre practitioners from different parts of the country a forum to exchange ideas, and it has occasionally hosted productions from the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh alongside Indian companies. The 42nd edition ran 16-25 December 2025.
The festival's significance rests on its direct lineage to one of Bengali theatre's most influential post-independence groups: Nandikar has been a central institution in Bengali theatre since 1960, and its festival, now over four decades old itself, reflects the group's deliberate evolution from a pure performance company into a broader theatre institution with education, outreach and festival-organising functions. Its stated national-integration mission, explicitly bringing theatre workers from across India's different states and language traditions into conversation with each other, gives it a distinct civic purpose beyond simply showcasing plays. As one of the longest continuously running theatre festivals in eastern India, organised by a single theatre company rather than a government body or venue trust, it also represents a genuinely artist-led institutional model distinct from most other major Indian theatre festivals.
The festival is confirmed very much active, its 42nd edition ran 16-25 December 2025 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, continuing an unbroken run since 1984 under Rudraprasad Sengupta's continued leadership as Nandikar's president. Nandikar itself marked its 65th anniversary in 2025, giving both the parent group and its festival genuinely long, continuous institutional histories. For institutional and CSR audiences, it is a clear example of a decades-old, artist-founded theatre company sustaining both an active repertory practice and a major annual festival simultaneously, distinct from festivals organised by dedicated venues, government departments or external production companies.
Decades of platforming Bengali and pan-Indian theatre, plus workshops and exhibitions.
