Khadu Lapata Arr Anya Natak – Garhwali Plays

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lalit Mohan Thapliyal was a well known Garhwali and Hindi playwright, actor, and director whose career spanned six decades. His works include 9 full length plays, 30 one-act plays, including plays for children of various age groups, and 4 dance dramas. A journalist by profession, he worked with leading papers including the National Herald and the Hindustan Times and then with the Public Information Division of the WHO. He was awarded the Jaishree Samman by the Garhwali Bhasha Parishad, Dehradun in 1986. He received the Children’s Book Trust award for drama in a children’s literature competition for The Magic Island, in 1988. His play Chimtewale Baba won the Sahitya Kala Parishad Delhi All-India Playwriting Competition (1988-89). He was awarded the Mohan Rakesh Samman in 1996 for Panne ki Angoothi.

Wherever he lived his love of theatre stayed with him and he continued to write and direct his plays. In the late 1970s he established a Hindi language theatre group in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was posted. He returned to India in 1983 after his retirement from the WHO and for the next 21 years devoted himself to theatre full time. He established the Sadhana Sanskriti Pratishthan, a trust devoted to raising the quality of community life by raising cultural awareness. He believed that theatre was a very important educational tool and organized annual summer workshops for children, all gratis. Every year he directed and produced 4 to 5 plays with his theatre group, the Sadhana Natya Kala Kendra.