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Creating an idiom for mankind

Selim Al Deen fest ends with staging of "Bisharjan"

Jamil Mahmud
The week-long Selim Al Deen Festival 2012 ended with the staging of Indian troupe Tritio Shutra's “Bisharjan”, at the National Theatre Hall, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, on August 31. Suman Mukhopadhyay's directorial approach to the Tagore play made a lasting impact, in particular omnipresent priest Raghupati’s soft-spoken dialogues.
The characterisation of the protagonist, engaging performances along with a stunning set and befitting light at times were shining aspects of Mukhopadhyay's direction. He is better known to Bangladeshi culture lovers for his Indian National Award winning film “Herbert" (2006).
Gautam Haidar, who a couple of days ago impressed the Dhaka audience with his solo performances for “Naye Natua”, once again shone with a stunning performance as Raghupati. His rather improvised voice of a confused individual who all the time deals with good and evil befittingly fits in with the character created by Tagore. We saw a rather blank Raghupati soon after Joysingha's death when an outburst of emotion was more expected.
While there are different issues about this particular production of the Tagore play, the festival has many more aspects worth a mention. The final day also saw the staging of two more productions, Shomoy's Taufique Al Hakim adaptation "Shesh Sanglaap” and a solo recitation “Amar Rabindranath” by Hasan Arif.
The pieces were staged at the Experimental Theatre Hall and Studio Theatre Hall respectively.
Apart from the plays, the organisers arranged a weeklong exhibition featuring terracotta and other artefacts found in the under-excavation sites Wari and Bateswar. A seminar was also held on the same topic. In both cases, the aim was to see a corelation between our history of civilisation and Al Deen's thoughts regarding the history of theatre practice of this land.
Diversity of staging plays was an important aspect of the festival. When a festival named after a playwright such as Al Deen is held, the audience would anticipate more plays written by him. But stepping out of this stereotype concept, the organisers featured only one of his plays ("Dhaboman” by Dhaka Theatre) and included a diverse
range of plays, from Rabindranath Tagore to Shakespeare, from Oedipus to Taufique AI Hakim.
Selim Al Deen Foundation and Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy arranged the weeklong festival that began on
August 25 with the staging of Dhaka Theatre's new production “The Tempest”. Dhaka Theatre and Bangladesh Gram Theatre assisted the organisers to celebrate the genius of our gifted playwright Al Deen who died in 2008.