Chairman of Bangladesh Group Theatre Federation Liaquat Ali Lucky has been appointed the president of Asian regional centre of the International Amateur Theatre Association for the next four years in a recent
council held in Singapore.
Earlier, he had served as the vice-president of the
organisation for the past four years.He is also a member of IATA’s children and youth standing committee.
‘My aim will be making Bangladesh the focal country of the Asian region so that the theatre of the country benefits,’ said, Lucky, who is also the director general of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.
IATA is a worldwide organisation whose main focus is children. It arranges 20 to 25 theatre festivals and seminars a year. ‘I will try to organise festivals, seminars and workshops in Dhaka with participations of the representatives of different Asian countries,’ he said.
Lucky further informed that in the past years, during his involvement with IATA, he had sent 75 children and youth troupes of the country to different international festivals.
‘The problem is the IATA does not have much funds to sponsor all expenditures for participants in the theatre festival. Troupes need to manage travel costs, which is a big hurdle. We have to find out a way for the participation of the greater number of troupes from Bangladesh,’ Lucky said.
Liaquat Ali Lucky has been promoting children’s theatre for the past 25 years through activities of Peoples Theatre Association (PTA), a platform for theatre troupes including children and youth theatre activists.
The secretary general of PTA Lucky said, ‘We give support to form theatre troupes not only for privileged children, but also for underprivileged and marginalised children. We even have troupes for the children belonging to brothel.’
Lucky thinks PTA is an organisation which maintains the standard for international participation in any festival. ‘So if any troupe wants to participate in any international festival, they have to be a part of PTA, he said.
‘Any troupe that wants to be involved with IATA must correspond through PTA,’ Lucky added.
The children theatre troupes of PTA have participated in 72 international festivals. The organisation has arranged 11 festivals where 130 troupes have participated in 2009 and 92 troupes have participated in 2011, which he considers as a sign of good theatre practice.
-with New Age input
