Background
He is the son of Philisophy Lal, founder of Writers Workshop, one of India"s oldest creative writing publishers, established in 1958.
director literature educator theater educator
He is the son of Philisophy Lal, founder of Writers Workshop, one of India"s oldest creative writing publishers, established in 1958.
Born in 1955 in Calcutta, India, to P. Lal and Shyamasree Devi, he was educated at Street Xavier"s School, Presidency College, which was then affiliated with the University of Calcutta, and at the University of Illinois, United States of America.
He is Professor of English and Coordinator, Rabindranath Tagore Studies Centre (University Grants Commission), at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. He also heads Writers Workshop now, translates from Bengali to English, is a theatre critic for The Telegraph (Calcutta) and directs university theatre
His books include the "Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre" (2004, the first reference work in any language on that subject), "Rabindranath Tagore: Three Plays" (1987 and 2001, the first full-length study in English of Tagorean drama), "Theatres of India" (2009), "Twist in the Folktale" (2004), "Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage" (2001) and "Rasa: The Indian Performing Arts" (1995). He served as Head, Department of English (2007-2009), and previously taught in the Department of Comparative Literature (1991-1993), at Jadavpur University, Calcutta.
The Department of English, University of Calcutta (1989-1991).
And the Department of Theatre, University of Illinois (1981-1986). A Cambridge Fellow (1994) and Fulbright Fellow (2005), he has lectured widely in the United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and, of course, India.
He has published over 40 essays in various books and journals, and over 1000 reviews in Indian newspapers and periodicals. He conceptualized and provided the introduction, commentary and translated texts for a Civil Defense of Tagore"s own audio recordings, titled The Voice of Rabindranath Tagore (Hindusthan, 1997).
He is an active translator of Bengali poetry, contributing to the "Oxford Tagore Translations" while also publishing translations of Jibanananda Das.
He co-ordinates the Translation Studies course in the postgraduate syllabus of the English Department. Lal has directed twenty theatre productions, many of them for Jadavpur University where he teaches Drama in Practice, and worked in another twenty productions, including such internationally acclaimed successes as Tim Supple"s "Midsummer Night"s Dream". He has a 30-year-old portfolio in television and film as an awardwinning scriptwriter, researcher, commentator, narrator and subtitler, and has been interviewed by British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Nederland and University Grants Commission-Doordarshan.
Doctor Lal is Calcutta"s leading theatre critic, writing a regular drama column in The Telegraph since 1986.
He was chosen Best Theatre Researcher, 2000, by the Drama Academy of India.
Fellow: British Council.
Married Swati Ray, December 21, 1980. Children: Shuktara, Dhruva.