If you have ever cheered Naseeruddin Shah, gasped at Irrfan Khan, or laughed with Pankaj Tripathi, you have already met the National School of Drama. They all walked through the same gates in Delhi. So did Om Puri, Anupam Kher, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpayee, Piyush Mishra, and Seema Biswas. One small campus. A staggering number of stories.
So what is this place really, and why does it carry so much weight in Indian theatre? Pour a chai. Let us walk through it.
What is the National School of Drama?
The National School of Drama, almost always shortened to NSD, is India’s premier theatre training institute. It was founded in 1959 in New Delhi and is fully funded by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. It offers a three-year intensive diploma in Dramatic Arts, with specializations in acting, direction, and design.
If India had a Hogwarts for serious theatre artists, NSD is it. Without the moving staircases. But with arguably more drama.
A quick history: how did NSD come to be?
India had just gained independence. The country was rebuilding itself, and a small group of theatre lovers believed that a free India deserved a serious, professional theatre tradition of its own. The Sangeet Natak Akademi, which is India’s national academy for the performing arts, set up an Asian Theatre Institute in 1958. A year later, in 1959, that idea matured into something more focused, and the National School of Drama was born.
The man who shaped its soul in the early years was Ebrahim Alkazi, who took over as Director in 1962. Alkazi believed that Indian actors should train as rigorously as Russian actors at the Moscow Art Theatre or English actors at RADA. He was tough. Famously, eye-wateringly tough. He drilled discipline, voice, body, history, and design into his students. And the alumni list speaks for itself.
Who runs NSD today?
NSD operates as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture. It is governed by a General Council, an Executive Council, and a Director who runs day-to-day affairs. The Director’s chair has been held by some of Indian theatre’s biggest names, including Ebrahim Alkazi, B.V. Karanth, Ratan Thiyam, and Anuradha Kapur.
What does the three-year diploma actually cover?
The NSD diploma is one of the most demanding theatre programs anywhere in the world. Here is the rough shape of it:
Year 1: Common Foundation
Every student, no matter their eventual specialization, goes through the same first year. This includes:
- Voice and speech training
- Movement, yoga, and physical theatre
- Classical Indian forms (Kathakali, Kalaripayattu, Mayurbhanj Chhau, Bharatanatyam basics)
- History of Indian and Western theatre
- Acting fundamentals (Stanislavski, sense memory, scene work)
- Stagecraft basics: lights, sound, design, makeup
Year 2: Choose your specialization
Students now pick one of three streams:
- Acting: deeper character work, language and dialect training, performance in full productions.
- Direction: dramaturgy, blocking, script analysis, leading rehearsals.
- Design and Direction: set, costume, light, and sound design, with directorial sensibility.
Year 3: Repertory work and the Diploma Production
In the final year, students perform in full-length plays. Every student also delivers a Diploma Production, which is their graduation showcase. These shows are open to the public at NSD’s own Abhimanch and Bahumukh theatres in Delhi, and the audience usually includes the next batch of NSD aspirants taking notes.
How do you get into NSD?
Be ready. The acceptance rate at NSD is brutal. The school admits roughly 26 students a year, and applications regularly cross 3,000. That is under one percent.
The process has three stages:
- Application: You need to be a graduate (any subject), aged 18 to 30, with at least five amateur theatre productions to your credit. International students follow a slightly different track.
- Workshop and audition: Shortlisted candidates are called for a 7 to 10 day intensive workshop and audition in Delhi. You will perform a prepared monologue, do improvisations, sing, move, read a sight scene, and be observed almost every waking hour.
- Interview: Final shortlist faces a panel of senior faculty and theatre professionals.
The school does not look for polished actors. It looks for raw promise, curiosity, and the kind of work ethic that will not snap under three years of pressure.
What is the NSD Repertory Company?
Founded in 1964 by Ebrahim Alkazi, the NSD Repertory Company is a professional troupe attached to the school. It performs throughout the year, tours nationally and internationally, and gives recent NSD graduates a place to keep growing as paid actors. Many alumni passed through the Rep before moving to films.
What is Bharat Rang Mahotsav?
NSD also runs the country’s biggest theatre festival: Bharat Rang Mahotsav, often called BRM. It usually runs across January and February in Delhi, with parallel chapters in cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata. Over three weeks, BRM puts on roughly 80 productions from India and around 20 from abroad. If you ever want to take a crash course in world theatre in one trip, this is the festival.
Famous NSD alumni: the list nobody can quite believe
Here is a small sample. Brace yourself.
- Naseeruddin Shah
- Om Puri
- Irrfan Khan
- Pankaj Tripathi
- Nawazuddin Siddiqui
- Manoj Bajpayee
- Anupam Kher
- Piyush Mishra
- Seema Biswas
- Raj Babbar
- Ashish Vidyarthi
- Tigmanshu Dhulia
- Vijay Raaz
- Yashpal Sharma
- Mita Vashisht
- Surekha Sikri
Stage directors, designers, and playwrights from NSD have shaped contemporary Indian theatre just as deeply. Ratan Thiyam (Manipur), B.V. Karanth (Karnataka), and Anuradha Kapur (Delhi) all came through NSD before redefining what Indian theatre could look like.
NSD regional centres
Most people think NSD lives only in Delhi. It does not. The school now runs regional centres that take its training closer to where talent already exists:
- NSD Bengaluru Centre (Karnataka)
- NSD Sikkim Theatre Training Centre
- NSD Tripura Theatre Training Centre
- NSD Varanasi Theatre Training Centre
Each centre offers a one-year certificate-level course rather than the full three-year diploma. They feed local theatre ecosystems and discover talent the Delhi auditions might never see.
Why does NSD still matter in 2026?
India has more film schools, acting academies, and Mumbai-based workshops than ever before. So why is NSD still considered the gold standard? Three reasons.
Depth, not speed. NSD takes three full years. Most private acting workshops are six weeks. The work that goes into your body in three years simply cannot be hurried.
India-rooted craft. Few institutes in the world combine classical Indian performance forms with Western text-based theatre training the way NSD does. A graduate can do a Brecht scene in the morning and a Kalaripayattu warm-up in the evening without blinking.
A network for life. Once you walk out of NSD, you are part of a community of teachers, directors, designers, and actors who keep finding each other across the country and on film sets for the rest of their careers.
How to visit NSD or watch a show
NSD’s main campus sits on Bhagwan Das Road, near Mandi House in central Delhi. Public performances at Abhimanch (the main proscenium space), Bahumukh (the flexible black box), and Sammukh are usually ticketed at refreshingly affordable prices. Check the official website nsd.gov.in for the schedule. During Bharat Rang Mahotsav, the entire neighbourhood turns into a buzzing theatre fair.
The short version
NSD is to Indian theatre what the Indian Institutes of Technology are to engineering. A demanding, slightly mythical place that has shaped a disproportionate chunk of the country’s creative output for over sixty years. If you love Indian cinema, you already love NSD. You just may not have known its name yet.
Want to go deeper into Indian theatre training? Read our guide to Indian Theatre for Beginners, or explore why Indian theatre deserves global recognition.