Watching foreign theatre groups use digitally-cued lighting and sound equipment, Sudip Sanyal thought of developing something similar on his own.

Along with friend Santanu Maity, the city-based light designer has devised a software that will provide the same set-up at half the market price. The system arranges lighting sequences in a way that they start running at the click of the mouse or a touch on the laptop.

“What we had to take into account, however, was that the lighting equipment would still be the old ones we use everyday. Digital lighting and sound is not very popular in India because the theatre community is not computer-savvy,” he says.

So far, Sudip has used the software in Pancham Vaidik’s production Narokio at the Academy of Fine Arts and in Trityo Sutra’s Man of the Heart at Max Mueller Bhavan.