10 World Thinkers of Theatre

1. Manjul Bhardwaj 

        Manjul Bhardwaj is an actor, director, writer, facilitator and initiator in theatre. He is from Dakhora,[1] a village in Rewari District in Haryana, India. For past two decades, he is based in Mumbai and dedicated himself for creating "The Theatre of Relevance". As a writer and director, he has written and directed more than 25 plays.[2]


2. Badal Sircar 

       Badal Sircar (15 July 1925 – 13 May 2011), also known as Badal Sarkar, was an influential Indian dramatist and theatre director, most known for his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s and taking theatre out of the proscenium and into public arena, when he founded his own theatre company, Shatabdi in 1976.


3. Augusto Boal

        Augusto Boal (16 March 1931 – 2 May 2009) was a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements. Boal served one term as a Vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997, where he developed legislative theatre.[1]


4. Richard Schechner

        Richard Schechner is a University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University,[1] and editor of TDR: The Drama Review.


5. Peter Brook

         Peter Stephen Paul Brook, CH, CBE (born 21 March 1925) is an English theatre and film director who has been based in France since the early 1970s. He has won multiple Tony and Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Praemium Imperiale, and the Prix Italia. He has been called "our greatest living theatre director".[1]


6. Jerzy Grotowski 

          Jerzy Marian Grotowski (Polish pronunciation: ['jɛʐɨ grɔ'tɔfskʲi]; 11 August 1933 – 14 January 1999) was a Polish innovative theatre director and theorist whose approaches to acting, training and theatrical production have significantly influenced theatre today. He was born in Rzeszów, in South-eastern Poland in 1933 and studied acting and directing at the Ludwik Solski Academy of Dramatic Arts in Kraków and Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow.


7. Bertolt Brecht

           ugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht (/brɛkt/;[1][2][3] German: [bʀɛçt]; 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century. He made contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter through the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble – the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.[4]


8. Vsevolod Meyerhold

             Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold (Russian: Все́волод Эми́льевич Мейерхо́льд; born German: Karl Kasimir Theodor Meiergold; 9 February [O.S. 28 January] 1874 – 2 February 1940) was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.


9. Constantin Stanislavski

             Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski (né Alexeiev; Russian: Константи́н Серге́евич Станисла́вский; 17 January [O.S. 5 January] 1863 – 7 August 1938) was a seminal Russian theatre practitioner.[2] He was widely recognised as an outstanding character actor and the many productions that he directed garnered a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation.[3] His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his 'system' of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique.[4]


10. Bharat Muni

               Bharata Muni was an ancient Indian theatrologist and musicologist who wrote the Natya kalai , a theoretical treatise on ancient Indian dramaturgy and histrionics, especially Sanskrit theatre. Bharata is considered the father of Indian theatrical art forms. The Nattiyam comprises 36 chapters and it is possibly the creation of more than one scholar. It dates from between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st-century CE.[1