Bansi Kaul (23 August 1949 – 6 February 2021) was an Indian theatre director and the founder of Rang Vidushak, a theatre group in Bhopal. He was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honor, in 2014, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1995. Some of his notable plays included Aala Afsar, Kahan Kabir, and Sidhi Dar Sidhi urf Tukke pe Tukka. He was a designer and associate show director for the 2010 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony and also the art director for the 1986 and 1987 Khajuraho Festival.
Early life
Bansi Kaul was born on 23 August 1949 into a Kashmiri Pandit family in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India. He was interested in art and painting from an early age. He was exposed to amateur theater groups in Kashmir. He moved to New Delhi to join the National School of Drama (NSD), but, did not qualify for the first time, before successfully retrying. He graduated from the institute with a specialization in stagecraft in 1973. In 1986, he founded Rang Vidushak, a theater group based in Bhopal, that incorporated folk idioms into its production and evolved a new idiom of clown-theatre. The group performed in India and abroad in several languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil and Sinhalese.
Kaul directed and produced over 100 plays through his career, with some of his notable plays included Aala Afsar based on Nikolai Gogol's satirical play The Government Inspector, Kahan Kabir based on the collected works of poet-saint Kabir, and Sidhi Dar Sidhi urf Tukke pe Tukka an adaptation of Chinese folktale "Three promotions in succession". Most of his plays were based on the Nautanki style of street theater. Other works included Mrichakatikam, Raja Agnivarna ka Pair, Agnileek, Veini Samhaar, Dashkumar Charitham, Sharvilk, Pancharathram, Andha Yug, Khel Guru Ka, Jo Ram Rachi Raakha, Aranyadhipathi Tantyamaama, Zindagi aur Zyonk, Vatan ka Raag, and Saudagar. In a review of a retrospective of his works Rang-Bansi (), newspaper The Hindu wrote, "As a designer, he (Kaul) treads two worlds – the designer of mega events with plenty of resources and the designer of the theatrical productions suffering from utter paucity of funds." He was also the recipient of the 2016 Rashtriya Kalidas Samman for Kahan Kabir.