Born in Madgaon, Goa, Damoo Kenkre studied as a commercial artist and spearheaded the transition of Marathi theatre from the traditional to the modern in the early 1950s, with Vijaya Mehta, Vijay Tendulkar and Arvind Deshpande. Influenced by Parshwanath Altekar, he started his theatre career in the 1940s as an actor in amateur plays for theatre groups in Mumbai then developed into a director at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's inter-collegiate one-act competitions in the early 1950s. He made his mark there by modernizing stagnant techniques and providing the first insight into the use of costumes, lights, music and sets as a consolidated unit for the creation of a production. He toured East Germany in 1955 and trained in the UK for a year.

On his return, he directed and played the lead in a new free-verse adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1956). He acted in P. L. Deshpande's Tuze Aahe Tujapaashi (1957) and Sundar Mee Honar (1958) for the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh. He also directed and acted in numerous productions for them on an amateur basis before embarking upon a professional career. During this period in the late 1950s and early 1960s he did the plays of Vi Va Shirwadkar and Vijay Tendulkar. Experimentation with genre, form and design was his hallmark. He felt equally at home with the classical Hamlet, Tendulkar's naturalistic Manoos Navache Bet (1956), Ashok Paranjape's Atun Keertan, Varun Tamasha (1967), Shree Na Pendse's Asa Zala Ani Ujadala (1969), Ratnakar Matkari's comedy Birhad Bajle (1972) or Vasant Kanekar's melodrama Akhercha Sawal (1974). The sets he designed for Girish Karnad's Tuglaq (Marathi version directed by Arvind Deshpande) and Shakespeare's Othello (translated by Arun Naik and directed by Vijay Kenkre, his son) were unique, thematic and also functional and were highly acclaimed.

Kenkre worked as a professor at the prestigious Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai, and was Dean of the School of Art, Aurangabad. He also served as Director of Cultural Affairs, Government of Maharashtra, and Chief of the Kala Academy, Goa, which he founded. He directed plays for the Goa Hindu Association, and was President of Antarnatya, a prominent parallel theatre group.

Damoo Kenkre passed away on 28 September 2008 in Mumbai at the age of 80. He was given the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1970, and the Zee Jeevan Gaurav (lifetime achievement award) in 2007. He was a father figure for the new and young entrants in theatre and he conducted numerous workshops for them in acting, direction and design.

*Arun Naik is an author, editor, printer, publisher, theatre critic, translator, theatre director and designer. His translations and productions of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello have been widely acclaimed in both academic and theatre circles. He teaches Dramatic Literature, Communication Skills, Creative Writing, Translation and Printing Technology. He has contributed to The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre. He has travelled widely to study the latest in printing technology and in theatre.