Sombhu Mitra (1916-97)
Bengali-Hindi actor and director born in Hooghly Dist., Bengal. One of the most significant figures of 20th C. Indian theatre. The first play he staged, Bijon Bhattacharya’s Nabanna (1943), based on the 1943 Calcutta famine, was seminal to realist political theatre and a reference-point for the IPTA. He made his film début in K.A. Abbas’s IPTA-sponsored film version of the play Dharti Ke Lal. Set up his own theatre group, Bohurupee (1948), pioneering indigenous variations of Ibsen’s naturalist idiom (Dashachakra, adapting An Enemy of the People; Putulkhela, adapting Doll’s House; Badal Sircar’s Evam Indrajit) in tandem with stylised performances of Rabindranath Tagore’s Dak Ghar, Raktakarabi and Raja. Later theatre work includes exploration of Greek tragedy (Oedipus) and Brecht (Galileo). Invited by Raj Kapoor to direct Jagte Raho. Considered the greatest Bengali actor after Sisir Bhaduri, along with contemporaries Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and Utpal Dutt.
FILMOGRAPHY (* only d/ also d): 1946: Dharti Ke Lal; 1947: Abhiyatri; 1949: Abarta; 1950: Hindustan Hamara; 1953: Maharaj Nandakumar; Pathik; Bou Thakuranir Haat; 1954: Maraner Pare; Shivashakti; 1955: Durlav Janma; 1956: Jagte Raho/Ek? Din Raatre; 1959: Shubha Bibaha*; 1961: Manik; 1962: Suryasnan; 1967: Panna; 1969: Natun Pata; 1971: Nishachar.