A play with politics in mind

"I did not want to keep women as performers in the play as it is a political one and can be closed any time with police action. On April 4, the play was incidentally closed by the police in Chittagong Muslim Hall after 50 minutes of performance. The way the play has been reported about in the papers, although we are pleased that people will definitely be attracted at the same time there is fear of the stoppage of the play although we have come from far to give our message," said Ashim Das, the director of "Tomasha".

"There is no plot in the play as such. It is a combination of many incidents. By 'Tomasha' we mean darkness. We took the articles written by people like Mumtazuddin Ahmed, Shahriar Kabir, Abdul Ghaffar Chowdhury, Bollal Sen, Muntasir Mamun, Abu Musa and others that appeared in newspapers. We then dramatised the pieces such as Wahidul Huq's writing was transformed into an entire scene. Sometimes we used cartoons such as the one by Shishir Bhattacharya where a Jamaat leader went to the Savar National Memorial and an old man wiped his feet with his tears which was transformed into another scene. We show how perpetrators have gone to ask for forgiveness for the crimes of 1971.

"We have included another incident built around a well known minority community individual, who was threatened with circumcision by the rabble, made to drink urine and tortured furthermore, apart from being bereft of Tk. 1,00,000. We also show four leaders dicing Bangladesh into four sections for Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists. We depict famous politicians, justices, and a former president, many connected with a certain government, crouching around dustbin which stand for what we believe they have made out of history. We believe that history can be divided in large baskets of good deeds and evil ones. We call the characters pseudonyms with comic turns."

Asked to say a few words about Avant Garde, the group, Das said, " We wanted to promote professionalism. We tried to guarantee that the performers would have money as much as paying for their rickshaw fare to and from work."

Talking about the problems that he faced in making the play Das said, " Since there was fear of shutting down the play, the publicity went against the good turn out of audience for the play as people were afraid of stampede and mayhem. Thus our revenues were reduced. Even though we are continuing with our play, our audience is diminishing instead of increasing. Since this deals with a recent crisis we expected a warmer response and so were disappointed. Again, we have tried to be neutral showing the problems with the Awami League when they were in power and that with BNP, along with those of the Leftists(the last being detached from the society, as I see it, compared to those in my days). We show a famous lawyer, who after October 2001, went to relieve the discrimination of human rights in a foreign country when there were problems galore among the masses for him to hold up back home instead Bangladesh. We depicted how a famous poet changed his sides with the change of government. We felt that such a prominent person should have shown more loyalty and stability. This came under strong criticism from certain quarters. My perceptions may be wrong but I have depicted what I gleaned from my readings of newspapers and magazines."

Talking about whether it was the fear that it might be too serious for the viewers the director said, "Fortunately the audience was well aware of the existence of the characters that we had ridiculed and there was often much laughter from among the audience. There is nothing new. The mockery is of things past. There is nothing for them to be confused with. The reason why I've had the play is to remind the viewers of the recent wrongs in our history. No one wrote the script individually. It is what I and some of my colleagues like Shamsul Kabir Liton, Shumon Barua, Al Noman, Jisu Das etc. gleaned from the news media, some of the writings being actually flashed on the props as backdrops. The facts were simply lifted and edited."

Touching on whether there was a lot of the element of violence in the play, Ashim Das said, "There is violence in the words but not in any of the actions on stage. It stirs you and makes you think. I feel that it will move people and one does not have to be particularly politically motivated in getting angry about incidents like rape and carnage because it could happen to anybody and one could read the play on a universal level if one stretches one's imagination. One could very well be in the place of one of the sufferers and there are corrupt politicians the world over from time immemorial."

Dwelling on whether they had enough funds, Das said, " The play depends on our personal contributions and the sale of the tickets which certainly have not been enough. As it is, in Bangladesh, one often has to have some other profession apart from being a stage actor. A human rights activist, advocate Rana Das Gupta took a personal interest in helping us out with donation and arranging for sale of tickets."

So far, apart from "Tomasha" Avant Garde has produced "Noti Binodini" which is about a famous Bengali stage actress and Kafka's " Metamorphosis" under the name " Omriter Shandhaney". Das runs an acting school in Chittagong called "Fame School of Dance Drama and Music" which began in 1998 and which has a course of eight months for which there have been six batches so far.