Prasanna | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | Indian ![]() |
Alma mater | National School of Drama |
Occupation | Theatre director |
Years active | 1991-present |
Prasanna (born 10 February 1951), is a major Indian theatre director and playwright from Karnataka. He is one of the pioneers of modern Kannada theatre. [1] He graduated from the National School of Drama (NSD). He founded Samudaya and gave a creative direction to Kannada theatre in the 1970s with other activists. Prasanna lives in Heggodu in Karnataka. He is known for his organisational skills and new ideas and innovations in theatre. [2] He is a Sangeet Natak Akademi Awardee. He has directed plays for National School of Drama (Repertory Company, NSD), Ninasam, Rangamandal-Bhopal, Rangayana and worked with many theatre organizations of India. [3]
Prasanna quit IIT to pursue his passion in theatre. He was Inspired into theatre by B.V. Karanth, Prasanna joined the National School Drama (NSD). During the Emergency, he went back to Karnataka and founded Samudaya, a radical theatre movement for workers and masses. He staged street plays, protest plays and propagated their political thought in villages. For a while he was also a visiting faculty at NSD. For a couple of years, he worked for an independent television company in New Delhi. He gave this up and left the capital. That was a phase when Prasanna was disenchanted with theatre and almost gave up on his passion, a man who created well noted stage productions like Tughlaq, Gandhi, etc. [4]
Girish Karnad's Tughlaq, Gandhi, Life of Galileo, Thai (Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children), Acharya Tartuf, Lal Ghas Per Neele Ghode (translation -Uday Prakash), Ek Lok Katha, Shakuntalam (Abhijñānaśākuntalam), Fujiyama, Dangeya Munchina Dinagalu, Kadadida Neeru, Uttar Ram Charit, Cupid's Broken Arrow, [5] William Shakespeare's Hamlet , Seema Paar(Play on Bharatendu Harishchandra) [6] etc.
He is also a Kannada playwright, Novelist, and poet. Some of his dramas are:Uli, Seema Paar, Dangeya Munchina Dinagalu, Ondu Lokada Kathe, Haddu Meerida Haadi, Mahihmapura, Jangamada Badaku.
Indian Method in Acting [7]
Girish Karnad was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the coming of age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada, just as Badal Sarkar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India.
Kota Shivaram Karanth, also abbreviated as K. Shivaram Karanth, was an Indian polymath, who was a novelist in Kannada language, playwright and an ecological conservationist. Ramachandra Guha called him the "Rabindranath Tagore of Modern India, who has been one of the finest novelists-activists since independence". He was the third writer to be decorated with the Jnanpith Award for Kannada, the highest literary honor conferred in India. His son Ullas is an ecological conservationist.
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National School of Drama (NSD) is a theatre training institute situated at New Delhi, India. It is an autonomous organization under Ministry of Culture, Government of India. It was set up in 1959 by the Sangeet Natak Akademi and became an independent school in 1975. In 2005, it was granted deemed university status, but in 2011 it was revoked. Paresh Rawal is the current Chairperson of National School of Drama (NSD).
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