MYTHS PLAYS & GIRISH KARNAD

Girish Karnad one of the greatest of modern Indian dramatists was a versatile genius. His rise as a prominent playwright in 1960s marked the coming of the age of Modern Indian playwriting in Kannada just as Badal Sarkar’s in Bengali Vijay Tendulkar’s in Marathi and Mohan Rakesh’s in Hindi. He was the recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award the highest honour conferred to creative writers in India. Girish Karnad created his plays often using history and mythology to represent modern societal issues in a new perspective. He also translated his major plays into English to a critical acclaim across India and abroad. His plays have been translated into several Indian languages and directed by eminent directors like Ebrahim Alkazi B. V. Karanth Alyque Padamsee Prasanna Bhanu Bharati Arvind Gaur Satyadev Dubey Vijaya Mehta Shyamanand Jalan and Amal Allana. He was also active in the world of Indian cinema working as an actor director and screenwriter both in Hindi and Kannada earning numerous awards along the way. Girish Karnad found a new approach like drawing on historical and mythological sources to deal with the contemporary themes and the existentialist crisis of modern man through his characters locked in psychological and philosophical conflicts.