Playwrights for children`s theatre have always been popular in India and around the world. Children theatre in India has attained new heights in the recent times and has given a new impetus to the Indian theatre culture. Conventionally children have played a major role in the Indian drama circuit. Children have always been an integral part of theatre. Firstly they form part of rural audience for traditional Indian theatre and also folk theatre in India. They are the biggest audience for theatre, who watch along with parents and families.
Children are an important part of theatre. And a lot of credit goes to Rabindranath Tagore who was among the first to promote children theatre, after he set up his ashram for boys at Santiniketan in West Bengal in Birbhum District. He made theatre compulsory for boys and he, himself, supervised the rehearsals. He insisted that theatre should be open to all to help students grow. Tagore started writing new scripts for children in 1908. He started with Sharadotsab (Autumn-Festival) - the first of his plays about season specifying man in peace with nature. King and Rebel is the only play he wrote in English in the year 1913, was meant as a pedagogical exercise to develop the boys` fluency in that language. Rabindranath Tagore as a Dramatist has contributed greatly towards promoting children theatre in India. Apart from Tagore, some of the other children`s playwright from West Bengal are; Sukumar Ray, Sirshendu Mukherjee etc.
Some of the other legends in children`s theatre include Sankaradas Swamigal, who kick started the famous Tamil movement of boys` companies by setting up the Samarasa Sanmarga Sabha (1910) and Tattuva Minalochani Vidya Balasabha (1918), teaching and preparing young talented boys to act.
Gubbi Veeranna`s company in 1925, in the state of Karnataka, started a travelling children`s theatre, while Shivarama Karanth visualized of children`s operas. In the year 1926, G.R. Shirgoppikar, theatre personality of Maharashtra, put together rural underprivileged Marathi children into Anand Sangit Mandali, bring into effect his own expertise in sound effects, trick scenes and slides. Two children plays - Nanna Gopala ("My Gopala") and Modannana tamma ("The Cloud`s Little Brother", 1930-31) were written by distinguished Kannada author Kuvempu. Original Dogri theatre started with `Untouchable`, (Achut) 1935, written by Vishwanath Khajuria, which was staged by schoolchildren, followed later by his brother Narender`s scripts for children.
Many Marathi dramatists and playwrights like; P.L. Deshpande tried their hand at children`s plays when radio drama for young audiences became well-known; some of the printed scripts even made it to school syllabi. Vijay Tendulkar has six anthologies of drama for young people. In Gujarati, Pragji Dossa composed over a hundred children`s plays. Other significant children`s dramatists include K.V. Subbanna (Kannada), G. Sankara Pillai (Malayalam), Satya Prasad Barua (Assamese), Safdar Hashmi (Urdu/Hindi), and Pundalik Naik (Konkani).
Pransukh Nayak, the Gujarati theatre actor, set up his own group in the 1980s to stage drama related to education for children. M. Ramasamy and Velu Saravanan, in Tamil Nadu, became renowned as special for children`s-theatre.
