Prof. Ananda Lal learnt theatre hands-on with the Kolkata group, The Red Curtain (1973-80), did a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Illinois in 1986, and has been a regular at NSS since then. He taught drama in the Comparative Literature and English Departments at Jadavpur University, retiring in 2017. He introduced a practical theatre course there in which he directed students for public performances every year for 25 years. His project to establish in Jadavpur University a Tagore Cultural Complex with four separate theatre spaces won prestigious Ministry of Culture funding from the Government of India but has still not materialised.

As theatre critic of The Telegraph (1986-2018) and The Times of India (2018-20), he reviewed more than 3,000 productions, continuing to do so now on his website KolkataTheatre.com. His most important books on theatre include, in order of publication, Rabindranath Tagore: Three Plays, Rasa: The Indian Performing Arts, Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage, The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre, Twist in the Folktale: Three Plays, Theatres of India, Indian Drama in English: The Beginnings, Utpal Dutt: Barricade, and Centrestage: Essays on Theatre, Indian and Intercultural. He directed over 30 theatre productions and worked on many others, especially such international successes as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (directed by Tim Supple), for which he did the dramaturgy, and lectured widely abroad and at home on Indian theatre. He has written several teleplays, including the nine-episode Two Hundred Years of Bengali Theatre for Doordarshan.