If you ask anyone who studies Indian theatre seriously to name the directors and thinkers shaping contemporary work from inside the academy, Anuradha Kapur sits near the top of every list. She is not loud. Her productions do not chase trends. Her writing is sharp without ever being showy. And the influence she has had on a generation of Indian theatre artists is significant.
Who is Anuradha Kapur?
Anuradha Kapur is an Indian theatre director, writer, and former Director of the National School of Drama (2007 to 2013). She is a founding member of Vivadi, a Delhi-based interdisciplinary arts collective. She has taught and directed in India and abroad for over four decades and has received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award.
The Vivadi years
Vivadi was founded in 1989 in Delhi as a working collective of theatre artists, dancers, designers, musicians, and writers. The group included Anuradha Kapur, Madan Gopal Singh, Bhaskar Chandavarkar, Bharat Singh, Vivan Sundaram, Sharmila Biswas, and other artists who wanted to make work across disciplines without rigid hierarchies. Vivadi’s productions blended theatre, music, dance, and visual art on equal terms, and explored themes from mythology, history, gender, and contemporary Indian life.
A few notable Vivadi works:
- Antigone (Anouilh, restaged with Indian musical and visual idioms)
- Sundri (on women in nineteenth-century Indian theatre)
- Umrao
- The Job (Brecht’s short story adapted)
Her tenure at NSD
Anuradha Kapur was Director of the National School of Drama from 2007 to 2013. During her tenure she pushed for stronger faculty in design and dramaturgy, increased focus on women playwrights and women directors in the curriculum, and a more confident international presence for the NSD Repertory and Bharat Rang Mahotsav. She also wrote extensively during this period on theatre history, women’s theatre, and the politics of performance.
Her writing and thinking
Outside of direction, Anuradha Kapur has published widely on Indian theatre. Her book Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar is a much-cited study of the Ramnagar Ramlila as a complex theatrical and ritual form. Her essays on gender in Indian theatre, on Parsi theatre history, and on visual culture in performance are part of the standard reading list in Indian theatre studies programs.
Her signature direction style
A few traits that recur in her work:
- Sharp dramaturgy. She thinks through every line and every cut.
- Visual composition that pulls from miniature painting, photography, and modern visual art rather than naturalistic stagecraft.
- A consistent feminist lens. Women are protagonists, thinking out loud, not decorations to a male hero.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration, especially with musicians and designers.
Why her work matters
Three reasons.
She bridges the academy and the stage. Many fine theatre directors do not write. Many fine theatre scholars do not direct. Anuradha Kapur is rare in being equally rigorous in both, which means her productions are intellectually honest and her writing is informed by the realities of putting actors on a stage.
She built a collective that lasted. Vivadi’s interdisciplinary model is now widely emulated. Three decades on, it still influences how young Indian artists think about cross-art collaboration.
She put women at the centre. Indian theatre, like Indian cinema, has historically centred male protagonists. Anuradha Kapur’s productions and writing have steadily reframed that, both by staging female protagonists and by making space for women playwrights, designers, and directors in mainstream conversations.
How to engage with her work
Vivadi productions are revived periodically and shown at festivals like Bharat Rang Mahotsav. Anuradha Kapur’s writing is widely available in academic anthologies on Indian theatre, including journals like Sangeet Natak and Seminar. The Ramlila book remains in print.
The short version
Anuradha Kapur is the kind of artist who shapes a field from inside, building productions, building a collective, training a generation of students at NSD, and writing the books that future scholars will quote. Indian contemporary theatre would look meaningfully different without her work.
For more, read about the National School of Drama, and our piece on Badal Sircar’s free-stage revolution.