A Bangladesh-India collaborative festival, Ganga-Jamuna Theatre and Cultural Festival, concluded at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on Monday evening
The 8-day festival was launched on September 1 . Throughout the eight days, 14 theatre troupes from Dhaka and Kolkata staged 14 plays drawing houseful attendance of theatre enthusiasts.
Ganga-Jamuna theatre festival, being organised by Indian theatre troupe Aneek (Kolkata) since 1998, is aimed at consolidating the harmony between Bangladesh and India through cultural exchange.
Asaduzzaman Noor, cultural affairs minister, inaugurated the festivalon September 1 while, Ramendu Majumder, worldwide president of International Theatre Institute; thespian Mamunur Rashid, thespian Nasiruddin Yousuff, who is also president of Sammilito Sangskritik Jote, Liaquat Ali Lucky, director general of BSA, and Kolkata-based thespian Dolly Bose were present as special guests.
After the inauguration, local troupe Nagarik Natya Sampraday and students of Theatre and Performance Studies Department of Dhaka University respectively staged Naamgotrohin and Hamlet at National and Experimental Theatre Halls of Shilpakala. Both the shows had full house audience.
Nagarik’s Naamgotrohin is the troupe’s recent production. The play is a compilation of three short plays based on three short stories by the late Urdu writer Sadat Hasan Manto.
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| A scene from Ekusher Golpo produced by Kolkata-based troupe Anik |
Directed by Kolkata-based thespian Usha Ganguly, all the three plays deal with the life of women who end up being prostitutes due to unavoidable circumstances. The plays sharply reveal the reality underneath the surface and delve deep into the reasons which pushed the women into prostitution.
The plays — Kali Salwar, License and Hatak — were sewn together by narrator-connectors whose commentaries and narrations shed light on the facts and realities of these women’s lives.
The play had a star-studded cast of Api Karim, Shriya Sarbajaya and Sara Zaker, who enacted the lead roles of the three interconnected short plays.
At Experimental Theatre Hall, however, the audience was led into the split, schizophrenic mind of Hamlet.
Students of Theatre and Performance Studies Department of Dhaka University staged Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Hamlet in late iconic poet Shamsur Rahman’s arresting translation.
Seven Master’s degree students of the department acted in the play in character-shift style, where each of the four male actors acted as Hamlet, Claudius, Horatio and others.
During the festival, Theatre Art Unit staged ‘Amina Sundari’ at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. The late seasoned theatre personality S.M. Solaiman dramatised it from the 300-year-old folktale of Bheluya Sundari, periodically theatricalised there by various hands since the 1960s.
The play is directed by Rokeya Rafique Baby which describes the heroine’s loyalty to her husband who sailed to Myanmar, where he deceptively remarries. After ten years of travails, Amina lands in the clutches of a merchant, into whose house her now destitute husband stumbles. He recognises her, but the first thing he asks is about her chastity. The three actresses performed the role of Amina – especially Anika Mahin Eka with her rich singing – brought out the feminist theme un-melodramatically, while the men behave like rank villains or fools such as Shujan, the best of the caricaturists, leers behind Amina in the drama.
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| A scene from Prometheus produced by Mohakal Natya Sampraday . |
Even though the story is 300 years old, it’s still the persistent reality of almost all women and households in the male dominated society which made the play as the story of thousands of women, portrayed by three Aminas.
On August 3, Nrityanchal’s acclaimed dance-drama titled ‘Rai Krishna Padabali’ was staged at the National Theatre Hall of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, as the part of Ganga-Jamuna theatre Fest 2014.
Inspired by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Bhanusingher Padabali’, ‘Rai Krishna Padabali’ is written by poet Sheikh Hafizur Rahman based on the eternal love story of Radha and Krishna. The dance drama has been directed by Sukalyan Bhattacharya, noted choreographer of Kolkata. Two celebrated dancers of the Country, Shamim Ara Nipa and Shibli Mohammad, play the lead roles in the production, which was accompanied by about 40 artists of Nrityanchal.
On the closing day, Mohakal Natya Sampradaya staged their latest production “Prometheus” at the National Theatre Hall, while theatre troupe Aneek from Kolkata staged “Ekusher Golpo” at the Experimental Theatre Hall.
“Prometheus”—written by Anon Zaman and directed by Mostafizur Nur Imran—is a Bangla adaptation of Aeschylus’s ancient Greek tragedy “Prometheus Bound”. The play encircles the myth of Prometheus, a Titan who defied the gods and gifted humanity with fire, for which he was subjected to eternal punishment.
Mir Zahid Hasan, Syed Lutfar Rahman, Mohammad Shahnewaj, Utpal Chakrobarty, Anabil Khisak, Zahidul Kamal Chowdhury and others have played different roles in the play. Thandu Rayhan has done the lights, while Ali Ahmed Mukul and Mostafizur Nur Imran have done the stage and music respectively.
Meanwhile at the Experimental Theatre Hall, theatre troupe Aneek staged their much-acclaimed production “Ekusher Golpo.” Amalesh Chakrobarty, Secretary of Aneek; Nader Chowdhury, presidential member of Bangladesh Group Theatre Federation and Hasan Arif, general secretary of Sommilito Sangskritik Jote were present at the closing ceremony, among others.
Source: Weekly Holiday