Theatre personality Nirup Mitra passed away in a private nursing home in south Calcutta on Monday. A resident of Purbachal Cluster IX, he was 89 years old. He is survived by his wife Jayanti and daughter Meghna. He had been admitted to hospital on January 3 with Covid-19. His wife is still under treatment there.

Born in Patna, Mitra completed post-graduation with modern history and political science from Patna University.

He wrote plays for All India Radio since the 1970s, working with producers like Ajit Mukherjee, Jagannath Basu, Papia Chakraborty and Biswanath Das. In the 80s, he started writing audio plays. Asked by The Telegraph Salt Lake six months ago how many plays he had written in his life, he had responded “over 300-400”.

A part of his prolific output has been preserved in print with several compilations of his plays being published. He was also a poet, a novelist a lyricist and an editor. He used to edit a biannual theatre journal called Natyalipika.

Nihsongota, his first play for the radio, is counted as one of best radio plays in Bengali. It was performed on air by Kali Banerjee and Jagannath Guha. Many group theatres, including Bohurupee, had staged his work.

After retiring from his teaching career, he became culturally active in the locality too. “We founded the group Shruta-Sanglap at the start of the millennium with the aim of training budding talent. He used to act and direct, other than write plays,” said friend and neighbour Prabir Roychowdhury, 84.

One of Mitra’s biggest contributions to theatre was popularising full-length audio plays. “Actors do not dare to stage audio plays longer than 15-20 minutes. He took the challenge of writing and staging plays over an hour long,” Roychowdhury said, choosing Pratidwandi, on a widowed mother’s dilemma over remarriage, as his favourite Nirup Mitra play.

No Durga puja in Cluster IX was complete without a Nirup Mitra play being staged. Even in 2018, neighbours had staged one of his plays.

In 2013, he founded another group called Srutisroyon. “He had a rare talent for turning plays into audio plays,” said Parthapratim Seal, a group member.

“We performed his last play Louhabhuk in July. Ironically, it is on a virus that consumes iron and seals the fate of a space-exploring family,” Seal added.