Jayatheertha

Jayathirtha B. V. was born and brought up in Bangalore, Karnataka. A high school dropout due to financial constraints, he started working as a salesman at 17 and took up theatre as a pastime.^{[citation needed]} He trained at Abhinayataranga under the renowned theatre personality A. S. Murthy^[2] and later became a teacher in the same institution.

Jayathirtha won several awards for his works in theatre, including the B. V. Karanth Best Stage Reviewer Award (1997) for his critical review of the play, Maranayak.^{[citation needed]}

Jayathirtha has conducted more than 150 theatre training programs, focusing on issues including life skills.^{[citation needed]} He penned and directed 65 street plays and ten stage plays from 1996 to 2007. He organized those plays to spread social awareness among illiterates and the backward classes. Jayathirtha directed Hathim Thi, an experiment with 500 actors, at the Al-Ameen school building.^{[citation needed]}

Jayathirtha has used street plays as an effective medium to convey philosophical messages, concerning social issues, imbued with the entertaining flow. His approach is to involve the audience in the flow of the plays. He scripted six stage plays and 69 street plays/shows.^[21]

Jayathirtha directed a 450-episode^[when?] of educational radio drama for children, Chukki Chinna – Chinnara Chukki, for an NGO Education Development Center under Sarva Shikshana Abhiyana program of Government of India.^[22] This interactive syllabus-based radio program was recorded between 2005 and 2007, but it continues to play on the radio for first-standard to sixth-standard students in Karnataka government schools.^{[citation needed]}

• Best Back Stage designer 1994 (Abhinaya Tharanga)
• Best script writer 1996 (Abhinaya Tharanga)
• Best stage reviewer 1997 (B.V.Karanth Award)
• Second Best Small Story Award – from Gulbarga University (2002)
• First place in small story award – from Belagali Sahithya Pratistana. (2002)
• First place in small story award – from Kannada Sahithya Parishath. (2002)
• First place in script writing – Street play – Pravardhini from Sahithya Sankramana (2003)
• Best Indian short film Hasivu from Cinerail film festival in Paris