Theatre
Harold Pinter week begins
Ershad Kamol
Though contemporary British playwright Harold Pinter has achieved international success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatists, he is not a popular name amongst the theatre lovers in Bangladesh. To introduce the Nobel Prize winning dramatist to Bangladeshi audience, a theatre festival and book exhibition began on September 4 and runs until September 8. British Council, Bangladesh in collaboration with the Department of Theatre and Music of University of Dhaka (DU) has arranged the programme at the British Council Auditorium. Besides exhibiting books by the writer, arranging a seminar, eight theatre performances -- The Caretaker, Betrayal, Old Times, Night, The Lover, The Dumb Waiter, Monologue and The Dwarfs-- will be staged by the students of Department of Theatre and Music. Students of the department study plays by Pinter and stage the plays as part of the academic course titled 'Theatre of Absurd'. Dr Israfil Shaheen, chairperson of the department, who is also the co-ordinator of the theatre performances, asserted, "Students study Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter as part of the Theatre of Absurd course. Translations of Harold Pinter's plays are not available in Bangla that's why students have to translate and direct the plays on their own. They do it collectively. Teachers of the department only guide them to reach the goal." The festival began with the staging of Pinter's play The Caretaker. The play is about two neurotic brothers whose fragile relationship is upset by a vagrant who comes into their lives. Written in the 1960s, it is a postmodernist play in which reality and reliability are in and out of focus. His plays are noted for their use of silence to increase tension, understatement, and cryptic small talk. In The Caretaker, Pinter has created a world where the audience shares the characters' confusion and suspense about what is going to happen next. The play is translated and directed by Mainul Hassan and Syam Khan respectively, who are the students of the department. Shahman Moishan, Rajib Chandra Das and Shantanu Haldar performed the three characters of the play. Earlier in a discussion programme, Professor SMA Faiz, Vice Chancellor of DU, Dr AFM Yousuff Haider, the pro-Vice Chancellor of DU, Richard Sunderland, the acting director of British Council, Bangladesh, William Arnall-Culliford, head of press and public affairs of British High Commission, Dhaka, theatre personality Ramendu Majumder and Dr Israfil Shaheen delivered speeches.
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Actors in a scene from the play The Caretaker |
