Story : Tawfiq Al Hakim
Adaptation and Direction : Azad Abul Kalam
Knowledge, intelligence and creativity has showed men the path of Civilization. Any person with intellect is highly admired by us. This is the normal picture. But is it the real picture? Don’t we sometimes try to avoid the intellectual person to hide our lack of intellect? Don’t we fear, “what if, the person does not admit my authority?”
There may be a person who pray everyone would be better ‘spineless’ around him. He prays, those people would bow to any of his order, would tolerate any of his torture. they would not apply any conscience to judge ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in anything. Like the ox that live silently in the corner of the burn, even if someone put rope around its neck – the man with little intellect anticipates other men to be just like that!
Play : Brindaban Das
Direction : Azad Abul Kalam
A power play is going on worldwide where humanity is least present or is not there at all. The tug of war for the takeover of power has become a regular event. Someone is playing the ropes from behind, someone as nakedly as it can be. Innocent people are being the victim in between. Those who are absorbed by the power play does not care about the lives killed because of them. Or sometimes, the dead body becomes another toy for those powermongers. To put ones own team’s label on the dead man they even kill more number of people – ultimately, all they need is to tag the dead body as one of them. So we see, like the tug of war, two teams involve in a brutal debate of taking authority over a dead body. At one point, it seems, if the almighty could, he would put the dead man’s life back again so that the debate would end and he would be relieved.
Play : Brindaban Das
Direction : Murad Khan
From the moment a human being has known his own kind to be his kinsman, he has learnt to laugh, to cry and to love. Perhaps, it was then when the feelings like happiness and sadness was born within the human heart. Men cry in grief, in melancholie and in pain. The scale that measures humanity in a person is how empathetic he can be. This love, this humanity within a person has made life and the world full of compassion. It has given human beings an ultimate superiority.
Selfishness, ownership and greed of power sometimes change the inborn feelings of these love-thirsty people and lead the wheel backward. It wants to change the natural characteristics and behaviour of a man. It wants a man to forget his dream. A man loses his humanity before he realizes. He forgets to cry and becomes a cruel, heartless, dreamless entity. A man without a dream and love becomes fierce, savage!
Even after, men seek the dream that has been lost, men seek for love and humanity. Men join the peace rally. Om Shanti!
Author : Syed Shamsul Haq
Dramatization : Shahed Iqbal
Direction : Kazi Toufikul Islam Emon
When a person loses his human virtues, the beast inside him gradually gets revealed. His behaviour becomes inhuman as the root of love is extirpated from his soul. Above it, he keeps admitting himself as a human being. He claims he is the best of creation. Mohabbat Khan, a Circus Proprietor, announces to present ‘a strange creature’ – that he mentions to be his headliner. Shocking the administration, a skinny man comes out of the cage. Peer Kebla, who is no less than a beast in behaviour, comes forward with his decrees. Ramjan, the living skeleton, proves in front of everyone who the real creature is.
Ramjan laughs out loud beyond everything ; because he turns out to be the only one, the true human being.
Play : Rahul Ananda
Direction : Kazi Toufikul Islam Emon
Oh mother of sage Astikasya !…
Venomous snakes ripple around and hiss
Hiss … hiss… and we, non venomous humans ( who today,
can create things more lethal than the venom itself!)
We hymn to the mother of the serpents, Manasa …
We pray so that snakes don’t bite
anyone in my lineage or heredity …
I will worship you till my death –
Manasa – Padma or Bishahari.
But, the venom does not dilute – everyday it fills up newer bags,
with venoms, while we know, or we don’t. It strikes sharply,
turning a person black or blue in pain, or sometimes yellow-
Like our Kamala. Kamala ascends to a new life and lets us know
of the infallible truth … a flower with a rainbow hue and thorns as soft as fur …
Play : Rahul Ananda
Direction : Kazi Toufikul Islam Emon
………………. Satisfied with his religious austerities, the Goddess of Power grants a boon to one of her devotees on earth. The minion turns into a power machine upon receiving the blessings from the Goddess. He forgets that even a star has its death one day. The Sun is one of the stars that shines the brightest in the sky. And the Earth is one small planet orbiting the Sun, carrying life in it.. Extremely intoxicated by power, the minion roughcast over the green Earth – he plays ekka-dokka, gollachut, bouchi, baghbondi like an addict … At the peak of his insanity, he even plays sap-ludu … At the same tempo, in an indefinite place, develops an indefinite episode – ‘love’ or ‘catch me if you can’ … the Goddess of Power laughs at her devotee’s childlike behaviour … She reminds him that the end of a circle is always the point it begins from … the universe … the point … the one who will have you demised is growing up in the pastuarge! …
Story : EK GIRZA EK KHANDAQ
Author : Krishan Chander
Theatrical Adaptation : Md. Shawkat Hossain Shajib
Direction : Kazi Toufikul Islam Emon
A man falls into a ditch accidentally. He cries for help to the people passing by. Some people notice him, but instead of caring much about rescuing him, they talk big about other things. For example, one comes and takes photos of the man to post and share in his Facebook Profile, but he does not rescue the suffering person as that would make his clothes dirty. A poet comes and talks about his newly published book, he also gives the man a copy, but he does not either bother to pull the fallen man out. After a chain of such events, different people from the society come in his rescue, but the man refuses to come up and go along with them … the world outside seems like a bigger ditch to him.
The story metaphors the present condition of the society, where the man who fell down the ditch represents the society and the people he interacted with represents the happening around it. As if, society has fallen in a big pit, but the people here are so busy within themselves to care to pull the society up.
Play and Direction: Monirul Islam Rubel
The whole country appears to be a dustbin of the corps. Crossfire by RAB; Concealed kidnapping and killing; Assassination of the University students; Death by road, launch accident; Killing in a public mob; Political assassination; Killing of journalists; Fundamentalist assassination; Killing in the border … Murder after rape … Suicide …
Death news covers a large part of the daily newspapers every day… they depict corpses of various kinds … as if we are living in a dustbin … What is this time we are passing? … Where resides our consciousness … our humanity? … It seems, we are already exhausted … our voice to protest has been muted … our feelings have gone numb … As if, we all are nothing but living corpses …
These are all we want to depict in our play ‘Lasher Desh’
Play : Tanji Kun
Direction : Saiful Jarnal
A clown wants to exhibit some of his talents. A guard wants the clown to deliver a message to the audience. One band group is more than happy if they get rewards for their performance.
A complaint seeks for fair judgment from the King. The servants want to save their job by any means. The minister wants to please the King with his chanting words. All the King wants is peacefulness.
But, the King is kept in the dark how this peace is ensured for him!
Play : JAGANMOY PAUL
Direction : KAZI TOUFIKUL ISLAM EMON
Naior portrait the story behind the circumstances of the women migrants workers like NODI, MONJUARA & so many others. The performance starts from the moment where a parent have come to the airport to pick up the coffin of their daughter, who was sold in the Gulf country as a housemaid by her husband and suffered tortures by her hosts that led to her death. Meanwhile they carry the coffin along to their village; the story of the girl can be seen in flashback. The main theme of the performance is to bring up the issue of illegal migration of women in the Middle East and raise the voices of the masses against the gender-based violation of the women migrants’ workers all over the world.
Apart from the officially listed street plays, in-house plays, or stage plays, another wing of performance that Prachyanat carries on regularly is its Theater Lab. The concept of theater lab encourages the non-stop practice of theater for its members as a means of actor’s preparedness. From time to time, members of Prachyanat arrange home productions where they perform little drama skids from an already acclaimed theatrical production, or create their own improvisation acts. On the other side, as a part of Prachyanat’s Theater Lab activity, the group also participates in various social activism or causes with their issue-based performances as long as its contemporary.
278/3, Kataban Dhal, New Elephant Road, Dhaka 1205.
[Beside Ashta Byanjan Hotel]
Contact 8801313774400 (WhatsApp)
