1. Gopal Chhotray was an Indian dramatist and playwright.
17 Facts About Gopal Chhotray
1. 2.
Gopal Chhotray was born in Puranagarh village of Jagatsinghpur district in Bihar and Orissa Province, India.
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Gopal Chhotray is considered to be one of the chief architects of modern Oriya theatre.
4.
Gopal Chhotray brought in significant changes in the morphology of Oriya plays, both in theme and structure.
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Gopal Chhotray rescued them from the hold of opera and melodrama, and the overbearing influence of neighbouring Bengal.
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Gopal Chhotray dominated the Oriya professional theatre for more than three decades.
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Gopal Chhotray was associated with All India Radio, Cuttack since its inception in 1948.
8.
Gopal Chhotray wrote more than half a thousand radio plays, including musicals and features, and made listening to his works a household habit.
9.
Gopal Chhotray brought both popularity and respectability for this genre by adapting them for broadcast by the AIR in 1960.
10.
Gopal Chhotray restored Baisnab Pani, the doyen of Odia Jatra, to his legitimacy and started an upsurge in musical plays by building up a large repertoire, consisting of his own originals and adaptations.
11.
Gopal Chhotray has nearly twenty LP records and cassettes of his own work including the all-time best 'Srimati Samarjani' which he produced for the radio with Akshaya Mohanty, based on Fakir Mohan Senapati's short story 'Patent Medicine'.
12.
Gopal Chhotray was pivotal in designing the dramatic contents of the Odisha Doordarshan when TV came to the State.
13.
Gopal Chhotray nurtured its foundation at Cuttack and continued to sustain it after it shifted to Bhubaneswar.
14.
Gopal Chhotray scripted nearly a hundred plays and features for the State TV, including serials and a memorable mythological called 'Devi Durga'.
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Gopal Chhotray started his career as an amateur stage artist in Bharati Theatres in Cuttack, but soon became the foremost playwright and film script writer for the Odia stage and films respectively.
16.
When professional theatre withered away in Odisha and the State radio lost out its monopoly to private broadcasting and TV channels of doubtful quality, Gopal Chhotray, devoted himself to writing of short stories to respond to his creative urge.
17.
Gopal Chhotray published two volumes of his work, comprising about thirty stories, which were actually embryonic of the plays and films he wanted to write but could not.