establishing a drama school, which would function as a full-fledged academy of dramatic arts. Bhartendu Academy of Dramatic Arts (BNA), when it was founded in 1975, in Lucknow, (with Raj Bisaria as its founder director) became the first of its kind in the large Hindi belt of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. His major productions of Indian plays have included Dharamvir Bharati's Andha Yug, Badal Sircar's Baqi Itihas, Adya Rangacharya's Suno Janmejaya, Elkunchwar's Garbo, Mohan Rakesh's Aadhe-Adhure, Mohit Chatterjee's Guinea Pig etc. His major and memorable productions have included Maxwell Anderson's Barefoot in Athens; Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear; George Bernard Shaw's Candida; Harold Pinter's The Caretaker; Sartre's in Camera; Ionesco's The Lesson; Strindberg's Father, Jean Anouilh's Antigone; and various plays of Chekhov, Ionesco, Tennessee Williams, Shaffer and so on. In the next few years, various states also formed their state academies for the arts, which gave boost to the theatre culture, and soon state capitals like Jaipur, Shimla, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Bhopal had their own theatre groups and culture. However, for many years to come, theatre largely remained driven by amateur groups, as full-time theatre did not become a financially viable activity. Most could not afford extensive props, scenery, lighting design, or newspaper advertisements and relied on word of mouth and small amount of postering. Many practitioners maintained regular jobs, either at educational institutions or in the corporate sector and rehearsed after working hours in hired spaces, as hardly any theatre group across Hindi theatre owned their own infrastructure, be it rehearsal space or theatre. Theatre directors often doubled as theatre managers, as impresarios were rare and impresario organisations even rarer, and then it was director's name that attracted the audience. As payments to cast and crew remained arbitrary and severely dependent on the success of the show, many picked up work in other mediums. As state funding was never available for theatre directly, practitioners tried to gain corporate sponsorship, or did "call shows" in other cities to raise money. Gradually a number of theatre venues started coming up, both proscenium and experimental, including Sri Ram Centre, Kamani Auditorium (1971), Meghdoot theatre (designed by Alkazi), NSD studio theatre, SNA studio theatre, Abhimanch and many others. While many directors like Alkazi staged plays at historical monuments and various innovative venues, street theatre brought theatre out to the streets completely, including in its content. Just as IPTA-inspired