Baithak with Arundati Nag and Padmavati Rao - Part 1

A. V. Varadachar – The Doyen of Kannada Theatre

A. V. Varadachar

A. V. Varadachar, a contemporary of Bellave Narahari Sastri, was one of the foremost playwrights in the gestation period of Kannada literature.

His Early Life

Born in 1869 to a family of Brahmin civil servants, A. V. Varadachar was a person with an attractive physique and a good voice. He never had any formal training or background in theatrebut his physical attributes and his minimal training in music led him to act in plays during 1880s in Mysore and Bangalore.

A. V. Varadachar started his professional career in 1889 when several Nataka companies came up in Mysore to compete with the first professional theatre company established under the palace’s patronage. From such a background, A. V. Varadachar became an influential actor and playwright and developed many novel styles later adopted by other theatre troupes. He individuated the clichéd characters from epics and dressed them in a new sense of realism.

GIRISH KARNAD Director Actor and Famous Play writer

Girish Karnaad

Chandra Girish Raghunath Karnad (born 19 May 1938) is a contemporary writer, playwright, actor and movie director in Kannada language. He is the latest of seven recipients of Jnanpith Award for Kannada, the highest literary honour conferred in India. For four decades Karnad has been composing plays, often using history and mythology to tackle contemporary issues. He is also active in the world of Indian cinema working as an actor, director, and screenwriter, earning numerous awards along the way. He was conferred Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan by the government of India. Girish Karnad was born in Matheran, Maharashtra, into a Konkani-speaking family. His initial schooling was in Marathi. As a youngster, Karnad was an ardent admirer of Yakshagana and the theater in his village. e earned his Bachelors of Arts degree from Karnataka University, Dharwad, in 1958. Upon Graduation Karnad went to England and studied at Lincoln and Magdalen colleges in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, earning his Master of Arts degree in philosophy, political science and economics. Karnad was a Visiting Professor and Fulbright Scholar in Residence at the university of Chicago.