Odia Books

Gopala Chotraya was born in 1918 he is a famous odia playwright. The impecunious circumstances of his family and his early interest in the theatre prevented him from receiving much formal education. He began his career as an actor-member of an amateur theatre group. In 1940 he joined a professional theatre company called the Bharati Theatre perfotming then in Manikghos Bazar, Cuttack. ‘The actor-turned-playwright wrote his first one-act play, Sahadharmini (wife) in 1941.

Later most of his plays were staged by two other professional theatre companies, the Annapurna theatre and Janata Theatre of Cuttack. He was also associated with the All India Radio, Cuttack, and worked as a producer in its Drama Section, from which he retired in 1977.

Chotraya is one of the chief architects of postIndependence odia drama, the others being Kartikakumara Ghose, Adwaitachandra Mahanti, Bhanjakisor Patnaik, Ramachandra Misra, Kamalalochana Mahanti and others. odia drama before them dealt mostly with historical and mythological subject-matter and its chief aim was patriotic propaganda. There were of course, a few plays depicting such social themes as untouchability, prohibition and women’s liberation, etc., Kalicharana Patnaika’s Bhata (Rice, 1943) for instance, dealt with the problem of food scarcity which Odisha faced in 1943. The play was a great success.

Social realism became the principal mode of dramatic art in the post-Independence era. Playwrights like Chotraya were acutely aware of the numerous problems that had cropped up in the Indian society at the advent of independence. They also became familiar with Marxist and Freudian ideas and with the experimental theatre of Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw and others. Chotraya’s first full-length play Pheria (Come Back, 1946) was staged by a professional theatre company, Annapurna Theatre, ‘B’ Group, Cuttack in 1946.

The play ran to packed houses for several months. Pheria celebrates the triumph of Gandhi’s programme of village reconstruction and welfare through its central character Suresh’s return from the town to his village where he devotes all his time and energy to the welfare of the people. The play is not entirely free from sentimentality and melodrama. But its sensitive characterisation and its realistic and precise dialogue are its plus points. Bharasa (Reliance, 1952) is a very different kind of play. Its central character is a poor, idealistic painter called Mohana who is helpless before the ill-treatment society metes out to him.

The play examines the role of the artist in society and the aim of art in a manner similar to that of Bhajakisor Patnaik’s Jayamalya (The Garland of Victory, 1956), although its artist-hero Braja is very differently conceived. Bharasa has a flawed structure, it poses the questions alright, but falls to resolve them. The last three scenes are insufferably melodramatic. The success of the play lies in the complexity of its characterisation especially of Kumar Saheb and Mrinal. Next is commercially a very successful play, Parakalama (The Quill Pen, 1954).

It traces the rise and fall of one Acharya, a politician, whom power corrupts absolutely. In the last scene in which he is arrested, his characterisation verges on the tragic. The conflict between capital and labour is the theme of Pathikabandhu (The Friend of the Wayfarer), one of the three plays published in 1955. The other two, Sankhasindura (Bangles and Vermilion) and Nasta Urbasi (The spoilt Urbasi) are about two girls, Madhabi and Urbasi, and their search for their essential human identity through love and suffering. Abhaginira Swarga (The Salvation of the unfortunate Women, 1957) deals with the dowry system.

Ardhangini (The Better-half) which received the State Sangita Nataka Akademi Award presents the psychological study of a woman torn between her love for her son and her duty towards her husband. Chotraya’s other full-length plays include Sadhana (Perseverance, 1965), Ghataka (The Astrologer), Sriharika Samsara (The World of Srihari 1974) and stage adaptations of odia novels like Jhanja (The Cyclone), Abhinetri (The Actress), Amadabata (The untrodden Path), Malajanha (The dead Moon) and Pratibha (Genius) – all published during 1956-60.

In addition to these he has written a number of radio-plays and one-act plays. Sakhaprasakha (1977) is his latest collection of one-act plays.’ Chotraya’s drama is noted for its wide variety of themes, its social criticism, its realistic characterisation and for its witty and powerful dialogue. In some of his major plays like Parakalama, Nasta Urbasi and Ardhangini Chotraya displays a sense of irony which saves his art from deteriorating into cheap propaganda. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hemantakumara Das, Odiya Natakara Udbhaba O Bikasa (Cuttack 1979). Sarbeswara Das, Odiya Natya Sahitya (Bhubaneswara, 1981). riharika Samsara

Sankhasindura
Nasta Urbasi
Malajanha
Sriharika Samsara
Amadabata
Parakalama
Sadhana
Ghataka
Pratibha