in a period when like many popular writers, intellectuals too had turned away from theatre. The arrival of talkies in 1931, with Alam Ara, meant outflow of Hindi theatre audience that had already dwindled away after the incursions by Parsi theatre across the Hindi-speaking belt. Soon theatre actors, director, writers and technicians followed suit, shifting to Mumbai, the base for Hindi cinema, where the promise of easy money from studios was too captivating to resist. As a result, numerous theatre companies and playhouses closed down and some started showing cinema, the new medium of the age. As the masses moved away from theatre, lured by the glitz of cinema, which Parsi theatre provided readily till now, theatre landscape was now populated by an educated and sophisticated audience, moving away from cinema in response to its escapism, looking for realistic and socially-relevant plays. 20th-century Hindi theatre received a fresh impetus through Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). Though formed in 1942, with left-wing ideologies, after the All India People's Theatre Conference was held in Mumbai in 1943, IPTA Mumbai was formed An important contribution of IPTA was that it was first time that women started taking part in theatre in such a number. It created and inspired a generation of theatre practitioners and playwrights, like Krishan Chander, Kaifi Azmi, Balraj Sahni, Mohan Segal, Dina Pathak, Shanti Bardhan, Durga Khote, and others, one of them was Prithviraj Kapoor who founded Prithvi Theatres, a travelling theatre troupe, based in Mumbai in 1944, with actors like Prithviraj himself, apart from Uzra Butt, and Zohra Sehgal. The group was largely funded by Prithviraj Kapoor's film career and functioned till in 1960, when Prithviraj Kapoor's ill health forced its closure before his death in 1972. After independence Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), The National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama, was established by the Government of India in 1952, to promote performing arts. Another big change in the realm of Hindi theatre was the establishing of National School of Drama in Delhi in 1959, which had Bharatiya Natya Sangh (BNS) as its precursor. BNS, with the assistance from UNESCO, independently established the Asian Theatre Institute (ATI) in 1958, and in July 1958, ATI was taken over by the SNA, and merged with newly formed NSD, which initially functioned under SNA before it became an autonomous organisation. With its principal instruction language being Hindi, and stalwarts like Ebrahim Alkazi