(1916 – 22 January 2003)[2] was an Indian dramatist and playwright. He was born in Puranagarh village of Jagatsinghpur district in Bihar and Orissa Province, India.
He is considered to be one of the chief architects of modern Oriya theatre. He brought in significant changes in the morphology of Oriya plays, both in theme and structure. He rescued them from the hold of opera and melodrama, and the overbearing influence of neighbouring Bengal.
(1916 – 22 January 2003) was an Indian dramatist and playwright. He was born in Puranagarh village of Jagatsinghpur district in Bihar and Orissa Province, India. He is considered to be one of the chief architects of modern Oriya theatre. He brought in significant changes in the morphology of Oriya plays, both in theme and structure. He rescued them from the hold of opera and melodrama, and the overbearing influence of neighbouring Bengal. Gopal Chhotray dominated the Oriya professional theatre for more than three decades. Beginning with Pheria (Come Back) in 1946, he wrote more than 15 original stage plays and 8 adaptations of eminent Oriya novels, most of which were runaway success in professional stage.
Apart from adapting works of eminent Odia novelists like Upendra Kishore Das (Mala Janha), Basanta Kumari Patnaik (Amadabata), Kanhu Charana Mohanty (Jhanja) and former Chief Minister of Odisha Dr. Harekrushna Mahtab (Pratibha), he also adapted Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s ‘Ramer Sumati’, Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Enemy of the People’, A A Milne’s ‘Man in the Bowler Hat’, Henry Fielding’s ‘Mock Doctor’, and the English thriller ‘The Evil That Men Do’.
Gopal Chhotray was associated with All India Radio (AIR), Cuttack since its inception in 1948. After years of writing as a freelancer, he joined AIR, Cuttack as an in-house script writer in 1956 and worked till 1975. He wrote more than half a thousand radio plays, including musicals and features, and made listening to his works a household habit. His monthly serial ‘Purapuri Paribarika'(Entirely A Family Matter), which ran uninterrupted for three years, was perhaps the earliest chain-play the AIR produced.
While in Radio, Gopal Chhotray made a unique contribution to the Odia musical tradition by reviving rural opera, which had gone out of fashion, and was frowned by the city bred and puritans. He brought both popularity and respectability for this genre by adapting them for broadcast by the AIR in 1960. He 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.
He 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’. It continues to be a listening rage even after 40 years.
He was also pivotal in designing the dramatic contents of the Odisha Doordarshan when TV came to the State. He nurtured its foundation at Cuttack and continued to sustain it after it shifted to Bhubaneswar. He scripted nearly a hundred plays and features for the State TV, including serials and a memorable mythological called ‘Devi Durga’.
Gopal Chhotray began his artistic journey as an amateur stage performer with Bharati Theatres in Cuttack. However, he quickly rose to prominence as a leading playwright and screenwriter in the Odia theatre and film industry. Following his debut play Pheria, his subsequent works in the 1950s like Bharasa and Para Kalam were lauded for their originality and creative excellence. His breakthrough in film scriptwriting came with the 1950 release of the grand mythological film Sri Jagannath, which brought him widespread acclaim.
Over the next three and a half decades, Chhotray continued to write screenplays and dialogues for several films that bridged the gap between artistic depth and commercial appeal. His works such as Amadabata, Kie Kahara, Matira Manisha, and Badhu Nirupama received critical praise, especially for their powerful dialogues and compelling narratives.
As professional theatre began to decline in Odisha and state-run radio lost its dominance to private and often substandard TV channels, Chhotray turned his creative energy towards writing short stories. He published two collections, comprising around thirty stories, many of which reflected the seeds of plays and films he had envisioned but never produced.
In recognition of his significant contributions, he was honored with numerous state-level awards including the Sarala Samman, Bisuva Samman, and the Governor’s Plaque of Honour (1991). Nationally, he received the prestigious Kendriya Sahitya Akademi Award in 1982 and the Kendriya Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1987.
Gopal Chhotray remained rooted in Cuttack throughout his life. The year 2016 marked the 100th anniversary of his birth.
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