Abdus Selim

Time to set sail for a new cruise, oh dear voyager Sindbad!

Protiti’s poems are mostly ‘bare’ conversational musings exploring ‘selfhood, separation, exile, love and longing’.

2020 was not a very eventful year for live theatre, as the world of performances, where social mingling is one of the prime cultures, was viciously invaded by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Aly Zaker, my Galileo, made his final exit in the early hours of November 27, 2020, bringing about a nationwide realisation of loss and shock.

With the slogan, Aai Natoker Ongone, seven new plays, written by young playwrights and directed by young directors, were staged throughout Nagorik Natya Sampradaya’s Notuner Utshab 2019 at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, from November 29 to December 5.

Chronicling Bangladesh Theatre and Liberation War Plays inevitably persuades one to explore how proscenium theatre culture came in this subcontinent, especially in this part of India, that is Bengal, for, contrasted with our open-stage Jatra that does not divide the audience from the performers, a proscenium stage is the “arch or opening separating the stage from the auditorium together with the area immediately in front of the arch”. This Greek tradition came to India sometimes in the mid-18th century and obviously it is a colonial cultural legacy.

Pir (variant spelling: Peer) is purely a subcontinent concept that has etymological root in Persian language. In English, the word can be translated into saint or more specifically, holy man.

More than once I have written in this column that Bangla theatre lacks musicals though we have a reasonably long tradition of dance-drama introduced by Rabindranath Thakur.