GirishKarnad, the legendary Indian playwright, will be the star attraction at the
Festival of South Asian Literature and the Arts (FSALA-11) to be held in
Toronto from September 30, 2011 to October 2, 2011.
Karnad
will be reading from his recently published autobiography at the Robert Gill
Theatre, University of Toronto on October 1, 2011 (7:00 pm – 9:15 pm). His
reading will be followed by a dance ballet Fallen
Rain by inDANCE under maestro Hari Krishnan.
 |
| Girish Karnad |
Septuagenarian
Girish Karnad is a Kannada language playwright, poet, director, actor, critic
and a cultural administrator.
Karnad
is the recipient of innumerable awards including the prestigious Jnanpith Award
– the highest literary award in India, similar to Canada’s Governor General’s Literary
Award.
Along
with Mohan Rakesh (Hindi), Badal Sircar (Bengali) and Vijay Tendulkar
(Marathi), Karnad is credited for creating a national theatre movement in India.
His
plays such as Yayati, Tughlaq,
Nagamandala changed the course of Indian theater. Karnad earned encomiums
for using Indian legends, fables and history to depict the social realities of
20th century India. He has had an equally illustrious career in
films.
Born
in a Konkani (an Indian dialect) speaking family in 1938, Karnad’s ambition was
to become known as an English poet. After his initial education in Karnataka,
he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
He
won his first award for his play Yayati
– published in 1961, when he was 23-years-old.
Yayati is story of a king who is cursed to old-age in the prime of his
life but deflects the curse by asking his son Puru to sacrifice his youth for
him.
It
was followed by Tughlaq – the play
which earned Karnad international and lasting fame. It is named after Sultan
Muhammad bin Tughluq, one of the medieval kings of Delhi, and is a metaphorical
depiction of the initial idealism of and subsequent disillusionment with the
post-Independence India’s Nehruvian era.
Nagamandala,
a story of a neglected wife’s affair with a cobra who transforms into her
husband, is considered a classic. The English translation of the play was
staged at the Guthrie Theatre (Minneapolis, USA) as part of its 30th
anniversary in 1993.
In
1970, Karnad directed and acted in his first film Samsakara which is based on U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Kannada novel. His
foray into films also brought him accolades. He is remembered for his role as
Dr. Rao in Shyam Benegal’s Manthan
(1976), where he co-stared Smita Patil, and as Swami’s father in the television
serial Malgudi Days (1987), based on
the works of R.K. Narayan.
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