Satish Alekar

Playwright: Satish Alekar (1949) is one of India's leading playwrights. He has written more than 11 plays, short plays and also some screenplays since 1970. He writes in his native language Marathi which usually he directs. Mahanirvan (Dread Departure), Mahapoor (Deluge), Pidhijat (Dynasts) are some of his other plays. His plays have been translated, performed and published in many other regional Indian languages like Hindi, Guajarati, Tamil and English as well. With his unique sense of humor and absurdity, and an oblique view toward reality, he created his own idiom in the modern Indian theatre. His plays, such as Begum Barve and Mahanirvan have been extensively studied academically in India and abroad since 1985. He is recipient of several international fellowships for playwriting including Asian Cultural Council/New York Fellowship in 1983 and the Fulbright in 2003. He conducted courses on contemporarily Indian Theatre as a visiting professor at the Duke University, Durham, NC, US (1995), Tisch School of the Arts, NYU (2003) and Theatre Department, University of Georgia, GA (2005). He also conceived and successfully implemented several Playwrights and Regional Theatre Group Development Programs for Theatre Academy, Pune supported by the Ford Foundation (1985-92). He also directed English version of Begum Barve for University of Georgia, GA, US in October 2005. He is recipient of several national awards as a playwright including Nandikar Sanman, Kolkata in 1992 and Sangeet Natak Akademi, Delhi award in 1994. He is working as professor and head of Centre for Performing Arts (Lalit Kala Kendra Gurukul), University of Pune, since 1996.


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