It was no coincidence that the great Bengal Famine of 1943-44 (a man-made famine leaving 5 million dead in the rural Bengal and millions thronging the streets of Calcutta for a handful of rice) and the formation of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) both happened in the same year. The Indian freedom struggle was at its last leg then and many practitioners of art including Prithviraj Kapoor, Bijan Bhattacharya, Sombhu Mitra, Ritwik Ghatak, Utpal Dutt, Salil Chowdhury and Debabrata Biswas to name a few used theatre as a weapon to voice their anger at the social discrimination. Bijan Bhattacharya's Nabanna happened in 1944 and changed the history of Bengali theatre once and for all. For the first time, a true political play was written and performed on the Bengali stage. Nabanna used non-actors, from the different walks of life since they believed theatre was not special — it was indeed part of daily life. Again it may be quite intriguing if we realise that the Italian neo-realist movement started at almost the same time and dealt with the same urge to counter popular mainstream ideas and processes.