Sudipta Bhawmik
Sudipta Bhawmik, a well-known actor, director, and playwright, has been performing on the tri-state area stages since 1989. Sudipta has acted in and directed several plays (in Bengali and English) and has won several awards at different festivals in India as well as in the USA and Canada. He received training in acting and directing at the “Panchamved Charyashram,” a theater school in Calcutta, India, founded by Saoli Mitra, and had the privilege of training under the stalwarts of Bengali theater like Sombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, Saoli Mitra, Mohit Chattopadhyay, and others. He also received training from the famous playwright and director Badal Sircar at many of his workshops. Sudipta has also acted in a principal character role in Mira Nair’s film “The Namesake”.
In 2002, at the Toronto International Bengali Drama competition, Sudipta received the special actor’s award for his performance in “Kabar” from distinguished judges like Manoj Mitra, Bibhas Chakraborty and Soumitra Chatterjee.
Sudipta is a noted playwright and wrote several plays in Bengali and English. Sudipta’s plays tell the story of immigrant Bengali life, and this has been his unique contribution to Bengali Theater. His plays have received wide appreciation both from the critics as well as the audience. His plays not only tell the stories of the struggles and contradictions of first-generation Bengali immigrants, but also of their children and their divided loyalties. This has inspired several theater scholars to cite Sudipta’s plays in their scholarly work about diasporic theater. Multiple universities (Loyola Marymount, Drew Univ etc.) in the USA include Sudipta’s plays in their theater curriculum
Sudipta’s plays have been produced and staged in several cities in the USA, the UK, Bangladesh, and India. In Kolkata, major theatre groups like Theater Workshop, Curtain Call, Lokokristhi, Aneek, Noto, and others stage his plays on a regular basis. His plays have been translated and produced in several Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and English.
Several of Sudipta’s plays have been published in leading theater magazines of Kolkata, like Bohurupi, SAS, Minerva Natyacharcha, Bratyojon Natyapatra, and many others. Saptarshi Prakashan, a leading publishing house of Kolkata, has published a collection of Sudipta’s seven plays titled “Natak Samagra” in 2010. In 2012 Kolkata Book Fair, Kalabhrit (Naba Grantha Kutir) published Sudipta’s second book, “Ajo Kahini Ebong Onyanno,” a collection of five comedy plays, followed by “Koutuki Dosh” in 2018. In 2016, his third collection of plays, “Rajar Chithi O Onyanyo,” was published by Pratibhash of Kolkata. Sudipta is also a member of the Dramatist Guild of America and writes regularly for “The Dramatist” magazine published from New York.
Sudipta is the founding member of ECTA theater company and has been producing plays that “tell our stories through theater” since 2003 in New Jersey and all around the USA and India.
Sudipta is a published cartoonist, a book illustrator, and a regular blogger. His blog nynjbengali.com is a popular read amongst Bengali netizens around the world.
Sudipta is also the writer, director, and narrator of the popular podcast “The Stories of Mahabharata” and “The Stories of the Ramayana” available on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Amazon Prime, and Google Play podcast distribution services. Sudipta also presented a 3-part video lecture demonstration on Indian Theatre for the Academy of Folk and Classical Arts of IIT Kharagpur.
During the North America Bengali Conference (NABC) 2012 in Las Vegas, the Cultural Association of Bengal (NY) awarded Sudipta with the “Distinguished Service Award” for his contribution towards promoting Bengali culture in North America. The Bengal Foundation of America bestowed upon Sudipta its annual award “Amader Ekjon” in 2014. Sudipta also received the “Bhashanagar Award 2015” from Bhashanagar, a leading magazine from Kolkata, India. Sudipta also won the OneJari Best Play Award in 2020. In 2022, received the Pandit V. G. Jog Award from Swar Sadhana on the 100th Anniversary of Pt. Jog for contributions to “Drama and Drama Writing”. Sudipta’s plays “Ron” and “Curious Case of a Casual Terrorist” were also nominated for the prestigious New Jersey Perry Awards in the “Outstanding Original Play” category. In 2022, Sudipta was awarded the Gayatri Gamarsh Literary Award for excellence in creative writing.