He was controversial, candid and had a healthy disregard for anything colonial in theatre. The death of Satyadev Dubey has sadly brought the curtains down on an era of fierce Indianness on stage

Mumbai-based director, actor, playwright, screen writer and filmmaker Satyadev Dubey was best known for his play Andha Yug – a comment on the futility of war – by Dharamvir Bharti, which he staged in 1962. It is said that Dubey, who was born in Bilaspur in present day Chhattisgarh in 1936, had moved to Mumbai to become a cricketer. But he ended up in theatre. Director Bhanu Bharti, who produced Andha Yug, told IANS: “He was a remarkable man because he had carved a space for himself on the Marathi stage despite not being a Maharashtrian. He singlehandedly started a new theatre movement.” Critics say that Dubey courted controversy with his criticism of English theatre in India in the 1960s and ’70s, saying it was a colonial legacy and only the elite took part in it. However, he later switched to English theatre himself when he felt that the medium had freed itself from the baggage of British and American influence and English had developed and Indian idiom on stage. Click here to read more