Payer Awaj Pawa Jay staged
The National Theatre Hall of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy was decorated with dazzling lights and colourful papers to celebrate a special moment: the inauguration of the eight-day Syed Shamsul Haque theatre festival.
Not only the members of the participating troupes, everyone who passed by the area was drawn to the programme by its zeal and
fervour, colour and sound.The poet-playwright Haque along with the directors of his plays like Ataur Rahman, Sara Zaker, GolamSarwar and Sudip Chakrobarthy jointly inaugurated the festival organised by Prangonemor.
The festival will feature six original plays by Haque including Payer Awaj Pawa Jay, Uttarbangsho, Banglar Mati Banglar Jal, Apekkhaman, Irsha and Narigan. Haque’s translation of Shakespearean classic Macbeth and Haque’s poems are other attractions of the festival.
A seminar on Syed Shamsul Haque’s literary works is also included in the festival.
The inauguration ceremony was followed by staging of Haque’s classic Payer Awaj pawa Jay at the National Theatre Hall.
Theatre staged the 128th show of the play, which had been premiered in 1976 directed by the late Abdullah Al Mamun and reproduced recently under the guidance of a young director Sudip Chakrobarthy.
Even after three decades since its premiere in the 1970s, the play still attracts the audience for Haque’s wonderful poetic diction of a brutal story of the war of independence in 1971 where a rural matbur [influential person] ‘hands over’ his daughter for the ‘entertainment’ of the Pakistani Army.
Authentic acting in diverse characters by the seasoned actors including Ferdausi Majumdar, Kermat Moula and Tropa Majumdar captivated the audience for about three-hour show.
‘The play was originally directed by renowned director Abdullah-al-Mamun. I have reworked just on the set design by making it a little more suggestive’ Sudpi Chakrabarthy told New Age.
A delighted audience Palash Ranjan Roy, a media-worker, said, ‘I have heard about the play many times, but never been able to watch it. I am really happy.’
Another delighted audience, Habibur Rahman praised the performance of Tropa Majumdar and Tohfa Hossain in the characters of the daughter and influential man respectively.
On arranging the festival, Ananta Hira, president of Prangonemor, said, ‘This type of festival is usually arranged after the death of the person whom it is dedicated to. But we have tried to do it in the lifetime of Syed Haque only to let him know how much we, theatre activists, are in debt to him’.
newagebd
-With New Age input
