5 Playwrights Who Defined Modern Theatre

When the actors take a bow and walk off the stage, when the curtain falls, the architect of drama is still present. A playwright is present before, during and after a live performance ends. He lingers through the ideas, words, and visuals an audience experiences right in front of their eyes.

So, on this World Theatre Day, let's take a moment to appreciate the masterminds - the playwrights. We'd have no Hamlet, Oedipus, or no Shankuntala. Long before movies engulfed us in its charm, 'going to the theatre' was really about attending a live theatrical performance.

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The raw energy of the performances and the intimate connection with the audience, is a thrill that movies rarely seem to capture. The actors has to continue being in the zone, in the world laid out for him by the playwright despite his spontaneous reactions from the audiences and the thunderous applause.

Here are 5 playwrights and their works you need to know:

Vijay Tendulkar

Oxford Press Publications

Pioneer of modern Marathi theatre, Vijay Tendulkar critiqued the social fabric of the society through his plays. Ranging from one-act plays to full-length plays, Tendulkar has contributed over 30 plays in his lifetime. Beyond that he has written for the television and cinema, primarily exploring themes of gender, exploitation of humans, social hypocrisy and power.

Some of his notable works include, Silence! Court is in Session, Sakharam Binder, Kanyadaan, and Ghashiram Kotwal. These plays remain widely performed and studied in Indian modern theater as well as literature studies.

Girish Karnad

In frame: Smita Patil and Girish Karnad together in film NishantIMDb

Primarily a playwright in Kannada, Girish Karnad, a director, writer, playwright and actor, is one of the most most celebrated playwrights in the Indian theatrical circles. Blending traditional mythologies with contemporary issues, Karnad's plays like Hayavadana (1971), Tughlaq (1964), and The Fire and The Rain (1994) discourse the issues around power, jealousy, identity to highlight the innate philosophical conflicts of human beings.

Samuel Beckett

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One of the most popular post modernist plays, the Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, Samuel Beckett's plays are known for capturing the absurdism of life. His plays capture the bleakness of life where comedy finds it was somehow. Beckett through his plays famously, Waiting For Godot (1953) and Endgame (1957) depicted the bleak but darkly hunmourous life in a post-apocalyptic world.

William Shakespeare

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You don't need to be well-versed in archaic 14th century English to understand Shakespeare. Today, several publications offer abridged versions of his plays and every year some production company across the world performs one of the English Bard's plays. With 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and narrative poems under his belt, Shakespeare's plays including Hamlet (1601), Macbeth (1606), and King Kear (1606).

A master of language, Shakespeare's plays are known worldwide for their universal themes of love, power, betrayal and human nature.

Mahesh Dattani

Penguin Random House India

First Indian playwright in English to win a Sahitya Akademi Award, Mahesh Dattani has always challenged the social construct of the our society through his works. By combing elements of realism with theatrical innovation, Dattani's plays including Dance Like A Man (1989), On Muggy Night in Mumbai (1998), and Final Solutions (1993) critique on the struggles of modern India in relation to gender, society, and identity.

So, whether you want to step into the world of Shakespeare and understand tragedy of life, laugh at the absurdity of things around through Beckett, or understand the social fabric that we are part of through Tendulkar's dramas, theatre is a place where conversations never end but the playwright remains.