Arundathi Nag

Arundhati Nag (née Rao) (born 6 July 1956) is a prominent South Indian polyglot film actress and theatre personality. She has been involved with multilingual Theatre in India, for over 25 years, first in Mumbai where she got involved with Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), and did various productions in Gujarati, Marathi, and Hindi theatre, besides getting involved in television, director Jyoti Vyas's Gujarati TV series, Haji Aavti Kaal Che. Later and after her marriage to Kannada actor-director Shankar Nag (1980–1990), her association with theatre continued in Bangalore, culminating in realising the dream project of her late husband, the Ranga Shankara theatre, at J P Nagar, a suburb in Bangalore. She was awarded the 2008 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in Theatre Acting by Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance and Theatre. She was also awarded the 57th National Film Awards as Best Supporting Actress for her role in Paa.

Arundhati is the founder and the Managing Trustee of the Sanket Trust, established in 1992, which has Girish Karnad as its chairman, and which runs the Ranga Shankara, a Bangalore theatre which after four years of construction was inaugurated on 28 October 2004. Now the annual Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival has become a regular feature on Bangalore's cultural calendar.