Satyabrata Rout. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 22: Those who saw Godot Aaya Kya last week staged by Avartan theatre of Hyderabad at Rabindra Mandap here must have noticed one thing — the director of the Hindi adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is not cut out of the same cloth that theatre directors of the state are usually made of.

Satyabrata Rout, 55, who has adapted plays such as Rashomon, Animal Farm, Pygmalion and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, started his career with folk theatre. He grew up in Jajpur district watching his grandfather and father, who were both involved with jatra. Rout, even started playing side characters when he was about eight and started directing and writing plays as a teenager.

While pursuing graduation in science from the erstwhile Ravenshaw College, Cuttack (now University), Rout became a part of the theatre movement that was gaining momentum in the city and calls them the “golden years” of his life.

“Legendary actor Hemant Das introduced me to world theatre, which I was completely unaware of till then,” reminisces Rout.

While he was getting passionate about theatre, his father, Surendranath felt that it would not provide him a regular income and consequently persuaded him to take up medical studies.

But little did his father know that coming to Bhubaneswar would actually help him get closer to his obsession. He met veteran actor Ajit Das, with whom he started adapting Hindi plays in Odia.

Here, he also got the chance to meet the then National School of Drama director B.V. Karanth. In a few months, he got into the Delhi school to specialise in design and direction. Since then, it has been over two decades and during this time, he has worked with Rangamandal Repertory, Bhopal, the National School of Drama and later joined as an associate professor at the University of Hyderabad, where he is presently based. But his heart still longs to return to his homeland.

Rout is known for efforts to give an audio-visual presentation to every word in the text. He believes that a theatre movement has to start in Odisha if the state has to get national recognition. “Not only productions, we need workshops conducted by personalities who have seen world theatre,” he said.