Sheila Bhatia
Punjabi poet and playwright
Sheila Bhatia (1 March 1916 – 17 February 2008) was an Indian poet, playwright, theatre personality and the founder of the Delhi Art Theatre, a forum based in Delhi for the promotion of Indian art forms. She is credited with originating Punjabi opera, an Indian form of dance drama incorporating operatic movements. She was honoured by the Government of India in 1971 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award. A decade later, she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for theatre direction in 1982 followed by Kalidas Samman in 1997.
Early life and education
Sheila Bhatia was born on 1 March 1916 in Sialkot in British India, in present-day Pakistan. After securing a BA degree, she graduated in education (BT) and started working as a teacher of mathematics in Lahore, involving herself with the Indian freedom struggle.
Career
After involving in Indian freedom struggle, she moved to Delhi where she founded the Delhi Art Theatre. She also worked with the National School of Drama as the head of the acting department. Bhatia's debut production was Call of the Valley, a musical. That was followed by over 60 productions, such as Heer Ranjha (1957), Dard Aayega Dabe Paon (1979), Sulgada Darya (1982), Omar Khayyam (1990), Naseeb (1997), Chann Badla Da, Loha Kutt, Ghalib Kaun tha and Nadir Shah in Punabi and Qissa yeh aurat ka (1972), Hawa se hippy tak (1972), and Yeh ishq nahin asan (1980) in Urdu.
“Sheila Bhatia” enters the record as punjabi poet and playwright. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sheila, Bhatia and Punjabi can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sheila Bhatia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.