INDIAN DRAMA IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION: GIRISH KARNAD AND OTHERS

ABSTRACT

In this research article an attempt has been made to trace the new trends and approaches in Indian Drama in English Translation with reference to Girish Karnad and other dramatists. India has the longest and the richest tradition in Drama. Indian theatre has been enriched by some regional playwrights writing in their mother tongue and later on translating those plays into English. Girish Karnad, Basal Sarcar, Vijay Tendulkar and Mohan Rakesh prospered the regional theatres by apt, thought provoking, mythical, topical and social issue based drama. In a way, these playwrights did script the emergence of the ’ avant-garde theatre movement’ in the post - independence India.  Their popularity increased due to their subject matter and their style of writing and that is why they have been widely read and researched in Indian Universities. Badal Sarcar, Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad have contributed to the modernization of the face of Indian theatre. Contemporary Indian Drama in English translation has made bold innovations and fruitful experiments in terms of both thematic concerns and technical curiosities. It is not an off- suffering of any specific tradition and it has laid the foundation of a distinctive tradition in the history of world drama by reinvestigating history, legend, myth, religion and folk- lore with context to contemporary socio- political issues. New Drama has emerged as a process of decolonizing Indian theatre.

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