Theatre in India came to Standstill around 1940. The Companies closed dowm and the actors were jobless. It appeared that the theatre had no future in India. In the countryside certainly the traditional theatre was alive and active but it had no contact writh the new urban theatre.
During 1943-44, the rise of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) brought some life to the theatre in many regions of the country and gave it some strength and direction. This movement made a significant effort to bring drama and theatre close to common people and make them socially relevant in terms of their content.
But in its approach to form and technique, and in the general outlook, the IPРТА was basically West-oriented and it had no clear perspective for relating itself to the rich theatre traditions of the country.
It did however, inspire a number of talented theatre workers in many regions and languages, who later became pioneers of very significant and creative theatre work. But IPТА, because of its inner contradictions landed itself very soon in the morass of a narrow, sectarian attitude and was marginalized.
Another similar attempt in Hindi - The Prithvi theatre started by noted film actor Prithviraj Kapoor, in 1944 in Bombay with a nationalistic and socially-oriented selection of plays but modeled more or less after the Parsi theatre also collapsed around 1960.
Nemichandra Jain (Indian Theatre Tradition, Continuity and Change page 77-78)
Who started Prithvi theatre?
