Girish Karnad was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi films. 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.
Bansi Kaul 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.
Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu is a film director, stage designer and art director from India. He is best known for his directorial Garm Hava (1973), which was based on the partition of India. He was awarded Padma Shri in 1975.
Babukodi Venkataramana Karanth widely known as B. V. Karanth was an Indian film director, playwright, actor, screenwriter, composer, and dramatist known for his works in the Kannada theatre, Kannada cinema, and Hindi cinema. One of the pioneers of the Parallel Cinema, Karanth was an alumnus of the National School of Drama (1962) and later, its director. He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1976), six National Film Awards, and the civilian honor Padma Shri for his contributions towards the field of art.
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 & Chittaranjan Tripathy currently serves as Director of National School of Drama (NSD).
Arundhati Nag is an Indian actress. She has been involved with multilingual Theatre in India, for over 25 years, first in Mumbai where she got involved with Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), and did various productions in Gujarati, Marathi, and Hindi theatre, and then in Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and English, in Bangalore.
Gubbi Hampanna Veeranna was an Indian theatre director. He was one of the pioneers and most prolific contributors to Kannada theatre. He established the drama company, Gubbi Sree Channabasaveshwara Nataka Company, which played a crucial role in promoting the Kannada theatre field. He has been conferred the title Nataka Ratna meaning "A Precious Jewel" in the theatre world. Gubbi Veeranna laid the foundation stone for the Kannada film industry. He established a studio, produced silent films in early days of cinema and produced good Kannada short films, He built theaters and introduced many actors including Dr Rajkumar, G.V Iyer, B.V Karanth, Girish Karnad and others to the Kannada film industry.
Ebrahim Alkazi was an Indian theatre director and drama teacher. A rigid disciplinarian, he instilled in his acting students an awe and reverence that they still carry with them, with several of them having had the privilege of continuing the practice and training in the NSD Repertory Company, an introduction made to the National School of Drama by Alkazi. His standards later became very influential. He also remained the Director of National School of Drama, New Delhi (1962–1977). He was also a noted art connoisseur, collector and gallery owner, and founded the Art Heritage Gallery in Delhi with his wife, Roshen Alkazi.
Ratan Thiyam is an Indian playwright and theatre director, and the winner of Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1987, one of leading figures of the "theatre of roots" movement in Indian theatre, which started in the 1970s. Also known as Thiyam Nemai, Ratan Thiyam is known for writing and staging plays that use ancient Indian theatre traditions and forms in a contemporary context. A former painter, and proficient in direction, design, script and music, Thiyam is often considered one of leading contemporary theatre gurus.
Chandrashekhara Basavanneppa Kambara is a prominent Indian poet, playwright, folklorist, film director in Kannada language and the founder-vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi also president of the Sahitya Akademi, country's premier literary institution, after Vinayak Krishna Gokak (1983) and U.R. Ananthamurthy (1993). He is known for effective adaptation of the North Karnataka dialect of the Kannada language in his plays, and poems, in a similar style as in the works of D.R. Bendre.
Rangayana is a theatre institute which operates from Mysore, Karnataka, India. It works as an autonomous cultural institute. The organization consists of a professional repertory company, a theatre-training institute and a documentation and research centre. Rangayana offers courses in stage craft, preparation and presentation of plays in Kannada. It also conducts programs for promotion of Kannada theatre. Rangayana hosts a theatre festival in Mysore every year. Rangayana is the only government sponsored repertory theatre in the country. It is also undertaking a project to introduce theatre to kids and has created a children's repertory in association with the International Theatre Institute and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
Manohar Singh was an Indian theatre actor-director and character actor in Hindi films. He is best known for his performances in films such as Party (1984) and Daddy (1989). Starting his acting career from theatre, he went on to become a theatre director and later the chief of National School of Drama Repertory Company, 1976 to 1988, before switching to cinema. As a theatre actor his best known performances were in Tughlaq, directed by Ebrahim Alkazi; Himmat Mai and Begum Barve by Nissar and Amal Allana.
Brij Mohan Shah (1933–1998), better known as B M Shah, was an Indian theatre director and playwright. Shah along with Mohan Upreti, are together credited for the revival of the theatre in the Uttarakhand. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1979.
Shanta Kalidas Gandhi was an Indian theatre director, dancer and playwright who was closely associated with IPTA, the cultural wing of the Communist Party of India. She studied with Indira Gandhi at a residential school in the early 1930s, and remained close to the prime minister in later life. She received many government awards and sinecures under the Indira Gandhi administration, including the Padma Shri (1984) and being made chairperson of the National School of Drama (1982–84).
Surabhi is a family theatre group based in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. The group performs plays based on stories from Hindu mythology and the Puranas.
Tapas Sen was a noted Indian stage lighting designer, who was an important figure in 20th-century Indian theatre. He started working with Bengali theatre movement in Kolkata in the late 1940s, along with noted directors, Utpal Dutt and Shambhu Mitra. Later he became a founding member of the Indian People's Theatre Association's (IPTA), Delhi chapter, and worked closely with Hindi theatre. Through his career stretching five decades he worked theatre directors, Ebrahim Alkazi, Vijay Tendulkar, and also dancers Sadhana Bose, Chandralekha, Birju Maharaj and Kelucharan Mahapatra. He was known not only for his creative stage lighting, but also had a significant impact on the work of leading theatre director of the time.
B. Jayashree is a veteran Indian theatre actress, director and singer, who has also acted in films and television and worked as dubbing artist in films. She is the creative director of Spandana Theatre, an amateur theatre company established in Bangalore in 1976.
Alok Chatterjee is an Indian theatre actor and director known for his theatre productions like Death of a Salesman, Nat Samrat and #Anandmath latest play 2022. He has been teaching at NSD and Pune based FTII. He also taught acting in the institute of Anupam Kher, Actor Prepress in Mumbai. At present, Chatterjee, in Madhya Pradesh Natya Vidyalaya Bhopal, is known for his vast range of acting (teaching) with deep literary understanding. He is a gold medalist from the National School of Drama, Delhi for best acting. At present Alok Chatterjee does theatre in his hometown at Bhopal. He also awarded with Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for the year 2019 by the president of India Droupadi Murmu at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.
Satyabrata Rout is an Indian theatre director Scenographer, Author and theatre academic. He is a former faculty member of the National School of Drama. At present, he is a professor and Head of the department of Theatre at University of Hyderabad, India. He is known for his contribution toward Visual theatre in India.
