The theatre industry lost one of the finest artists, Bansi Kaul on Saturday. He died at 71. Born in a Kashmiri Pandit family on August 23, 1949, in Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, Kaul graduated from National School of Drama.
He started his career with NSD’s Repertory Company and was also in the faculty of the school for many years, before starting his own theatre group in 1984. Kaul was a director of Hindi theatre and the founder of Rang Vidushak, a theatre group and institute based in Bhopal.
Rang Vidushak is a theatre group that has incorporated folk idioms into its production. They evolved a new idiom of clown-theatre. It has performed in India and outside in different languages such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil and Sinhalese.
Kaul was awarded the Sangeet Natak Academy Award by Sangeet Natak Academy, India’s National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, in 1995 and Padma Shri by the government of India in 2014. His most famous play is ‘Kehan Kabir’, based on collected works of poet-saint Kabir.
Kaul had been battling metastatic cancer for 3 months. According to a source, he was also battling diabetes and a fluctuating blood pressure. Kaul had recently recovered from Covid-19.
President of Rameshwari Natya Sanstha, a theatre group in Delhi, MP Singh said, “Today, the theatre industry lost a very talented artist. Bansi Kaul was a respected name in the National School of Drama. He was a kind man.”
A resident of Satisar Apartment, Sector 7, Dwarka, Rakesh Dhar said, “Bansi Kaul was a very simple man. He was socially active and listened to everyone’s problems.”
