Plays

Playwright & Director: Azad Abul Kalam
Group: Prachyanat, Bangladesh
Language: Bengali
Duration: 1 hr 20 mins

The Play

The play starts with the entry of a garment owner forcing the labour to work, no matter what. The next scene shows garment workers with their everyday routine of working like a machine. Suddenly the building, where the labour is working, collapses and Taravan, the central character, wakes up to find the horror around herself. She is stuck in the debris and about to die in a few moments. But before she breathes her last, she takes a journey of reminiscences, scene by scene, to glance over her yet incomplete life.

Director’s Note

The owner of the Spectrum Sweater and Knitting factory is no different from million others who are inhuman in their approach to making money. The nine-storied building of the Spectrum factory at Polashbari in Savar collapsed at midnight on the 11^th of April, 2015. The building had been tilting on one side and that night it came down and became a giant heap of rubble. The radio, TV and newspapers were flooded with information on the collapse, the deaths, and the agony.

But sooner than one can imagine, a public swamp was filled up and turned into a modern establishment and machines were running again, making export-oriented garment products. The authorities watched silently since they had already been well-fed.

The debris had turned into a grave of those who had small dreams which were yet to be fulfilled as opposed to the overflowing coffers of greedy, ugly, money-seeking dogs. Tragedy of Polashbari tries to convey the unfulfilled dreams of those simple, hardworking, innocent people.

The Director & Playwright

Azad Abul Kalam, born in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 26^th of October 1966, is a director, playwright and actor. He received his M.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University of Dhaka. In 1997, he, along with some of his colleagues, founded Prachyanat, a theatre troupe which is today one of the prominent theatre platforms in Dhaka. His major directorial works include Circus Circus (1998), Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (2001), Koinna (2002), Bou Basanti (2004), Raja Ebong Annyanya (2008), Tragedy of Polashbari (2014) etc. He has also worked as a participant and director in Japan, UK and Denmark.

The Group

Besides producing four successful full-length plays, Prachyanat has as many as eight different programmes running at Prachyanat School of Acting and Design which was established in 2001. The school has successfully run thirty-six 6 month course batches while its thirty-seventh batch is already underway. Theatre-in-the-Open, Prachyanat for Children, Theatre-lab Production, Prachyanat Research Cell and The Musical Ensemble are part of the group’s creative approach.

Cast & Credits

Contacts

Prachyanat

278/3(3rd Floor) Katabon Dhal

Katabon Elephant Road, Dhaka

Bangladesh – 001205

M: +880 1712078123, 1819929397, 1715004075

E: prachyanat@gmail.com, azadak26@yahoo.com

W: www.prachyanat.org