Marathi theatre 1955 – Narayan Rao Rajhans 'Bal Gandharva' 1956 – Ganesh Govind Bodas 1957 – Chintaman Ganesh Kolhatkar 1960 – Gopal Govind Pathak 1964 – Keshav Trimbak Date 1971 – Shreeram Lagoo 1976 – Jyotsna Bhole 1978 – Dattaram N. Walwaikar 1981 – Chintamani Govind Pendse 1983 – Dattatray Ramachandra Bhat 1986 – Prabhakar V. Panshikar 1987 – Sulabha Deshpande (also Hindi) 1988 – Saudagar Nagnath Gore 'Chhota Gandharva' 1990 – Bhakti Barve Inamdar 1991 – Neelu Phule 1996 – Mohan Agashe Oriya 1961 – Samuel Sahu Sanskrit 1965 – Krishnachandra Moreshwar "Daji Bhatawadekar" Tamil 1959 – Pammal Sambandha Mudaliar 1962 – T. K. Shanmugam 1967 – S. V. Sahasranamam 1992 – Poornam Viswanathan Telugu theatre 1961 – Sthanam Narasimha Rao 1963 – Banda Kanakalingeswara Rao 1973 – Kalyanam Raghuramaiah 1986 – Peesapati Narasimha Murty Urdu 1963 – Zohra Sehgal 1994 – Uzra Butt From 2004 onwards 2004 – Rohini Hattangady, Ramcharan Nirmalkar 2005 – Chindodi Leela 2006 – Dharani Barman, Gita Dey, K. Kaladharan Nair 2007 – Ramesh Mehta 2008 – Markand Bhatt, Arundhati Nag 2009 – Sudha Shivpuri, Neeta Mohindra 2010 – Dilip Prabhavalkar, Banwari Taneja, Maya Krishna Rao, Swatilekha Sengupta 2012 – Parvesh Seth, Nirmal Rishi, Purisai Kannappa Sambandan 2013 – Vasant Josalkar, Kusum Haidar 2014 – Debshankar Haldar, Ramdas Kamat 2017 – Anil Tickoo 2018 – Suhas Joshi, Teekam Joshi 2019 – Alok Chatterjee, Pranjal Saikia 2020 – Prashant Damle, Bhupesh Joshi, Amit Banerjee 2021 – Neeleshwar Mishra, Y. G. Mahendran Mime 1993 – Jogesh Dutta 2002 – Niranjan Goswami 2009 – Moinul Haque 2018 – Swapan Nandy 2021 – Vilas Janve Direction 1957 – Jaishankar Bhojak 'Sundari' 1959 – Sombhu Mitra 1961 – Kasambhai Nathubhai Mir 1962 – Ebrahim Alkazi 1964 – T. S. Rajamanikkam 1969 – Habib Tanvir 1970 – Adi Ferozeshah Marzban 1971 – Satyadev Dubey 1972 – Shyamanand Jalan 1973 – Ajitesh Bandopadhyay 1974 – Damodar Kashinath Kenkre 1975 – Vijaya Mehta 1976 – B. V. Karanth 1977 – Rajinder Nath 1978 – Jabbar Patel 1979 – B. M. Shah 1980 – Rudraprasad Sengupta 1981 – R. S. Manohar 1982 – Sheila Bhatia 1983 – Kavalam Narayana Panikkar 1985 – Heisnam Kanhailal 1986 – Alyque Padamsee 1987 – Tarun Roy 1987 – Ratan Thiyam 1989 – Bibhash Chakraborty 1990 – Geoffrey Kendal & Laura Kendal (Joint Award) 1991 – Fritz Bennewitz 1992 – Mohan Maharishi 1993 – Kailash Pandya 1993 –