The eight-day long Ganga-Jamuna Theatre and Cultural Festival concluded on Monday with the staging of two plays at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Organisers of the festival dubbed it a successful festival.
On the final day, local troupe Mohakal Natya Sampraday staged Prometheus and Kolkata-based troupe Anik staged Ekusher Golpo respectively at National Theatre Hall and Experimental Theatre Hall of BSA.The festival featured sixteen plays by local and Kolkata-based theatre troupes. The festival also featured street plays and cultural shows by local troupes at the theatre halls and open space of Shilpakala. What made the festival a vibrant one, apart from the merit of the plays, was ‘more-than-expected turnover of audience’, say the organisers.
‘Every show at the festival went houseful. We are very happy to see that we have so many theatre-goers and lovers here’, said Golam Kuddus, convener of the festival organising committee.
Vibrancy and the success of the festival cannot be credited to the high attendance of audience alone, which at times became overflowing, but also to the wide variety of plays staged. The audiences enjoyed plays (original and adapted), jatrapala and dance dramas at the festival; among which some were worthy of high critical acclaim.
The list of adapted plays included classics like Prometheus by Greek playwright Aeschylus (staged by Mohakal Natya Sampraday), Hamlet by Shakespeare (staged by students of Theatre and Performance Studies Department of Dhaka University), Konjush (The Miser) by French playwright Moliere (staged by Loko Natyadal), Atmiya Swajan (Driving Miss Daisy) by American playwright Alfred Uhry (staged by Kolkata-based troupe Chupkotha).
There were some other productions that adapted themes and stories of age-old plays and tales. Among them were theatre troupe Agantuk’s Ondhokare Methane which was based on the Oedipus complex and the classic play Oedipus Rex, Theatre Art Unit’s Amina Shundori was based on a folktale.
Among the original plays were Syed Shamsul Haque’s Payer Awaz Pawa Jay (staged by Theatre), Selim Al Deen’s Nimajjan (staged by Dhaka Theatre) and others.
To note, Ganga-Jamuna is a well known theatre festival in Kolkata, which is organised there by Kolkata-based theatre troupe Anik; but for the past three years this festival is also being arranged in Bangladesh. It is, however, the ‘festival organising committee’ that arranges the festival here with the goal to consolidating cultural affinity and amity between the theatre activists of Bangladesh and India.
-With New Age input
