Theatre Fest On Women Issues
Women as oppressed, protestant depicted
Two dissimilar themes of vastly different eras were depicted through two plays on the second day of the ongoing theatre festival highlighting the women issues at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.
A 17th century folk based play addressed the pains of the oppressed women in rural Bengal while the other play showed the courage of women during the
war of independence in 1971.Theatre Art Unit staged the 51st show of its 12th production Amina Sundori at the National Theatre Hall, while respectively new theatre troupe Shunyan staged the 54th show of its debut production Lal Jamin at the Experimental Theatre hall of BSA on Tuesday.
The first ever theatre festival highlighting the women issues titled Nari Jagoroner Natya Ayojon has been organised by Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy
A traditional pala based experimental theatre production Amina Sundori features the fact that women have no respect in the male dominated society. Their love and emotions are also ignored and sometimes they are deceived by their near and dear ones.
The production, based on a 300 year old folklore of the Chittagong region titled Nochhor Malum and Bhelua Shundari, had been adapted by the late playwright-director SM Sulaiman and directed by Rokeya Rafiq Baby.
As done in the traditional pala, the actors and musicians took position in a line on the backstage and enacted different characters of the play.
‘The story may be 300 hundred years old, but its relevance to our contemporary society is obvious. Amina is not a medieval woman, she is any woman of any time’, says the director’s note.
‘The troupe was impressive and precise in presenting the play in a traditional pala form’, opined a theatre activist Mintu Saha, who enjoyed the play.
‘I enjoyed the songs embedded in the production’, said another audience Badhan Ahmed.
On the contrary, at the Experimental Theatre Hall, Shunyan’s Lal Jamin did not attract a large audience. A handful of audience enjoyed the monodrama featuring a woman’s reminiscence of the war of liberation and her frustration and discontent with the liberated country.
Written and directed by Mannan Heera and Sudip Chakroborthy respectively, Momena Chowdhury was the sole performer of the monodrama. Her spontaneous performance was well received by the attending audience.
‘The play depicts a poignant and agonising recollection of a woman who joined and suffered at the war of liberation when she was only fourteen’, Sudip Chakroborthy shared.
‘How a girl’s dream land becomes red-wet and blood-soaked has been brilliantly shown in the play through fragmentary images’, observed Dr Rashid Haroon, professor of Drama and Dramatics at Jahangirnagar University.
‘Momena Chowdhury’s performance was superb and moving. She did the hard job to captivate the audience for more than one hour through her sole performance’, Rashed Kabir, an audience, told New Age.
-With New Age input
