Vishnu Prabhakar was a Hindi writer. He had several short stories, novels, plays and travelogues to his credit. Prabhakar's works have elements of patriotism, nationalism and messages of social upliftment. He was the First Sahitya Academy Award winner from Haryana.
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.
Rai Chand Boral was an Indian composer, considered by music connoisseurs to be the Bhishma Pitamah, the father of film music in India.
Dharamvir Bharati was a renowned Hindi poet, author, playwright and a social thinker of India. He was the chief editor of the popular Hindi weekly magazine Dharmayug, from 1960 till 1987.
Munna Shukla was a Kathak guru and choreographer of Lucknow Gharana based in New Delhi, India. Born to a family who has been involved in dance for generations, Munna Shukla specialized in Kathak, a classical dance form of North India. He was a grandson of the noted Kathak Maestro, Late Achhan Maharaj, and a nephew of Birju Maharaj.
Amritlal Nagar was one of the prominent Hindi writers of the twentieth century.
Sudhindra Sircar, also known as Badal Sarkar, was an influential Indian dramatist and theatre director, most known for his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s and taking theatre out of the proscenium and into public arena, when he transformed his own theatre company, Shatabdi as a third theatre group. He wrote more than fifty plays of which Ebong Indrajit, Basi Khabar, and Saari Raat are well known literary pieces. A pioneering figure in street theatre as well as in experimental and contemporary Bengali theatre with his egalitarian "Third Theatre", he prolifically wrote scripts for his Aanganmanch performances, and remains one of the most translated Indian playwrights. Though his early comedies were popular, it was his angst-ridden Evam Indrajit that became a landmark play in Indian theatre. Today, his rise as a prominent playwright in 1960s is seen as the coming of age of Modern Indian playwriting in Bengali, just as Vijay Tendulkar did it in Marathi, Mohan Rakesh in Hindi, and Girish Karnad in Kannada.
Ram Gopal Bajaj is an Indian theatre director, academic, and a Hindi film actor. He has also been a faculty member and a former director of National School of Drama, New Delhi.
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.
Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe is a Marathi play written by Indian playwright Vijay Tendulkar in 1963 and first performed in 1967, directed by Arvind Deshpande, with Sulbha Deshpande as the main lead. Film received National Film Award for Best Marathi Feature Film At 19th National Film Awards. Sulabha Deshpande Won Maharashtra State Film Award for Best Actress.
Rajkumar Singhajit Singh, is a leading exponent, choreographer and a guru of Indian classical dance form of Manipuri, including the Pung cholom and Raslila. He was awarded with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1984 and the Padma Shri in 1986 for his contribution to the Manipuri dance. In the year 2011, Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's The National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama, awarded him with its highest award, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship for his contribution to Indian Dance. In 2014 he was also conferred with the Tagore Award.
Rajendra Gupta is an Indian film, television and theatre actor and director who is known for his television roles of Adina Beg Khan Sahib e Azam in 2010 series of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Pandit Jagannath in the 1990s Doordarshan fantasy television series Chandrakanta and Sudha's father – Jagat Narayan – in the 1998–2001 Sony TV drama Saaya.
Bhaskar Chandavarkar was an Indian sitar player, academic and film and theatre composer who worked with well-known directors of Indian cinema like Mrinal Sen, Girish Karnad, Aparna Sen, K. G. George and Amol Palekar in various languages including Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Oriya and was known for his blending of Indian classical and western music.
Chintamani Tryambak Khanolkar was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India. He wrote poetry under the name "Arati Prabhu" and prose under his own name. He received a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1976 for his playwriting and a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for his collection of poems Nakshatranche Dene.
Uttara Baokar was an Indian stage, film, and television actress. She acted in several notable plays, such as Padmavati in Mukyhamantri, Mena in Mena Gurjari, Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello, the mother in playwright Girish Karnad's Tughlaq, the nautch girl in Chhote Saiyad Bade Saiyad, and the lead role of Umrao in Umrao Jaan. In 1978, she directed Jaywant Dalvi's play Sandhya Chhaya, translated to Hindi by Kusum Kumar.
Hindi theatre is theatre performed in the Hindi language, including dialects such as Braj Bhasha, Khari Boli and Hindustani. Hindi theatre is produced mainly in North India, and some parts of West India and Central India, which include Mumbai and Bhopal. Hindi theatre has its roots in the traditional folk theatre of North India, like Ram lila and Raslila, and also influenced by distant Sanskrit drama. Starting with Bhartendu Harishchandra in the late 19th century and subsequent playwrights like Jaishankar Prasad, Mohan Rakesh, Hindi theatre came of age in the 1940s and 50s, when IPTA movement created a new brand of theatre practitioners in Hindi speaking areas, especially with IPTA Mumbai, Prithvi Theatres of thespian Prithviraj Kapoor, and theatre artiste Habib Tanvir, paving way for next generation of artists who came out once National School of Drama, Delhi started functioning in 1959.
Lalit Behl was an Indian actor, director, producer and writer.
Professor Maheswar Neog was an Indian academic who specialised in the cultural history of the North East India especially Assam, besides being an Assamese-language scholar and poet. He was a top Indologist, and his work covers all disciplines of Indian studies, folk-lore, language, dance, history, music, religion, drama, fine arts, paintings, historiography and hagiography, lexicography and orthography, epigraphy and ethnography. His research includes multi-dimensional features of Vaishnava renaissance in Assam through Srimanta Sankardev, Madhabdev, Damodardev, Haridev, Bhattadev and other Vaishnava saints of Assam.
Sheila Bhatia (1916-2008) was an Indian poet, playwright, theatre personality and the founder of the Delhi Art Theatre, a forum based in Delhi for the promotion of Indian art forms. She is credited with originating Punjabi opera, an Indian form of dance drama incorporating operatic movements. She was honoured by the Government of India in 1971 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award. A decade later, she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for theatre direction in 1982 followed by Kalidas Samman in 1997.
Narendra Sharma was an Indian dancer and choreographer. He was trained in Uday Shankar's school of modern dance. He is regarded as a pioneer in modern Indian dance. For his contributions to the field, he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Contemporary Choreography in 1976.
