'My Unknown Enemy' -- more than theatre

Ujjal Bhattacharjee, Editor, Deutsche Welle (Hindi Dept.), Bonn, who helped Stillmark conduct the workshop, said: 'This is my first visit to Bangladesh although my roots trace back to Faridpur, 250 years back, during the Battle of Plassey. My entry into theatre is as a translator of literature, including plays and poems of Hiener Muller, the most important Germany playwright after Bertolt Brecht. I've done a couple of workshops; this time there is no special translation project in this particular workshop, My Unknown Enemy; but this time the theatre people with different lingual background have got together; as a journalist I can comprehend people with different backgrounds of the subcontinent. The political backgrounds of the workshop participants are important due to the concept of the workshop.

'Here participants have come from countries, which have got certain animosity between each other; they met at Dhaka, a neutral spot. If Indians go to Pakistan, Pakistanis become the hosts and vice versa; both sides don't have the same opportunity to react with the same element of aggressiveness, let us say, to bring out the aggressiveness that ensued from the same starting position. On mutual grounds all have the same privileges: this was the basic concept of this theatre workshop.

'They have done, for instance as the Palestinians, Israelis and other people from Middle East origin held workshops when they met earlier in Cyprus. Last year, the workshop on Hiener Muller had actors, directors and theatre critics. This isn't easy as the protagonist becomes extremely complex, but somehow the effort worked.'

Asked to speak on the interaction between the participants of the workshop at GI, Bhattacharjee said, 'It was really very good. I have experience of meeting Pakistani counterparts, writers like Intezar Hussain, artistes like Iqbal Banu and film stars like Resham. But theatre people, when they meet and work on a theme, search and trace the aspects of enmity between different countries, with their own experiences. It is sometimes not enough to say that 'we're brothers'; let's find out what are the aspects and elements of this enmity.

One has to search for the prejudices within oneself. One tries to find these out against one's social and intellectual backgrounds. One brings them out and shares them with each other. Theatre is creation, despite different prejudices, emotions etc. The play Waiting for Godot presented here, is like a pile of mud, where with all the varied emotions one makes the journey through life.'

Dwelling on why the particular play had been chosen, Bhattacharjee said, Waiting for Godot emerged against the European background of World War II, where there was no hope and people were expecting for a change for the better. They didn't know what this change was or how it would come. People were waiting, but they didn't know for whom.

'The questions were secondary while the waiting was the primary element of their existence. The question is whether we are now in the same situation in the zones of conflict and problems today. We don't know what we are waiting for again, nevertheless, we are waiting for something that is liberating. The play shows the tension in a state. It shows the absurdity in which there is a definite logic and in that way the play is very realistic--one finds various elements in Waiting for Godot. Samuel Becket's famous play, in my opinion, becomes more relevant in a place like South Asia than that in Europe.'

Nasiruddin Yousuff, who organised the workshop said, 'I didn't do this alone--Bangladesh International Theatre Institute Centre helped me; the idea of this workshop came into my mind when I met Stillmark at Athens in 2002, when I was the president of CIDC (Culture Identity and Development Committee of ITI) and agreed to his plan of a workshop at Dhaka. I had the help of the CIDC of various countries. We found the idea of the workshop interesting as it included people from three countries--India, Pakistan and Nepal--where tension prevails; they have come to neutral Bangladesh. The characters come and react to each other ad lib.'

Talking about whether he had faced any problems, Yousuff said, 'The workshop projected the fact that there is boundless affection for each individual, no matter what his origin, once one came to Bangladesh. It proved that the average individual has no intrinsic hatred for each other.'

Ataur Rahman of the ITI, Bangladesh and Ramendu Majumdar, both well known theatre personalities, present at GI that evening, lauded the play, Waiting for Godot. They had high praise for the deep-seated socio-political thought behind the play, as well as the efforts of the director and the participants of the workshop.