I still remember vividly my first proper excursion out of Gulshan (the ex-pat poshy part of town where the BBC rocks its roost). Out of the home-car-office-car-home routine that had so far made up my days as London-based work deadlines kept drawing me back home after office hours, and out of the confines of the desk-computer-phone part of my job for a taste of the real stuff – a play, a veritable play!
The show was a piece called Shong Bhong Chong, a show based on tribal performance forms, performed by students of Dhaka University’s drama faculty and directed by one of the city’s renowned theatre directors. It had been recommended to me by Screaming Girl, the dramatically-named casting agency that I was working alongside to cast Bishaash, the TV drama being made in Dhaka by the BBC World Service Trust.
SG1: You should go and see this tonight.
I: Ok great. What time should it start?
SG1: Urrr, maybe 6.30? What do you think?
SG2: No. more like 7. Maybe 7.30.
I: So can I find out somewhere? Will it be listed?
SG2: Well it’s here in this paper but… no. There’s no time. You should probably set out now.
I: So how long will it take me to get there?
SG1: An hour maybe? Or possibly two. It depends on traffic.
It was close to 6 before I started out and I didn’t much rate my chances. So I recruited a production guy to come with me as I really didn’t know where I was going and he could help me figure it out along the way. He was invaluable, pointing out the areas of town that we were travelling through: the markets, the TV studios, other theatres, the railway line that runs through the centre of the town. The traffic was monumental. I was convinced that we wouldn’t make the show.
I: We should have taken the train. (It seems like the only feasible way to get the length of the town in an hour.)
Production Guy: What train?
I: Well that’s a line there, right? We’re about to cross it.
PG: That only goes out of town.
I: You can’t take trains within the city?
PG: Nope.
I begin to understand why the traffic is so bad. There are no trains, no underground, no trams, nothing but the cars and busses, rickshaws and auto-rickshaws (here named CNGs after the Compressed Natural Gas that they are run on) that are gumming up the roads. Mumbai travel was always made workable by the brilliant train system that cut its way right through the middle of the town from north to south taking a lot of weight off the roads. This was going to be something else.
We got to the theatre somewhat after the intended start time but still waited in the auditorium for about 20 minutes until it finally began. So relaxed start times would make up for the traffic problem. There was a way of working with the system after all…
The play was just brilliant. It was the first piece I had seen in the country and I felt I really had a treat in store if this was the kind of thing I was going to be watching routinely as part of my work. It was hilariously performed with dozens of lovely cameo roles played to perfection by a group of extremely talented young performers. The songs and dances that sewed the scenes together were breath-taking in their energy and vitality, and though I could only understand very little of the script I found myself laughing throughout. There was something infectious in the enjoyment of the performers.
At one stage the production guy leant over to me:
PG: Do you understand?
I: No!
PG: Then why are you laughing?
I: It’s just wonderful!
A man behind us answered his phone at one point and I turned round to give him evils.
PG: Don’t!
I: But he’s disturbing the show…
PG: He’s senior to us. Leave it.
And hence I was introduced to two strict Bangladeshi rules. People in the theatre will use their phones loudly and unapologetically. End of. And young people will show respect for their elders no matter what foolery they are engaged in. End of. Right then. When in Dhaka.
At the end of the show we mingled a little outside. I was introduced to some very popular actors and directors and took their cards so I could contact them about actors. I was encouraged to speak to them in Bangla but my confidence had left me. It was hard enough to front the conversation in the first place, this would have been asking too much. But I resolved that I would be able to do so soon, and indeed I would be doing that and way more sooner than I imagined.
This was the first of many shows and I have to say that not many others I saw in Dhaka measured up to the energy and life of this first play. Perhaps it was that this was performed by students, still full of enthusiasm for the art, enthusiasm as yet undiluted by the rigours of the life they were about to find themselves in. in Bangladesh there is very little professional theatre – only two companies manage to pay their actors a small fee for their work. Most actors support themselves with roles in TV dramas and ads, if they are lucky enough to get them, or with full-time jobs if not. Rehearsals usually take place in the evenings to allow for this, so those balancing professional and family lives make a huge sacrifice if they want to live a life in the theatre.
There’s also a different system of training. Apart from two Universities, Dhaka and Jahangirnagar, there is no professional actor training. Mostly this job is left up to the theatre groups – themselves mostly non-professional – who run youth theatre groups alongside their own rehearsals and performances. There are tiny, or non-existent, budgets for shows so production values are rarely high.
I still saw some amazing performances over the two years I was there. One of my favourites was Binodini, a one-woman show performed by Shimul Yousuf and directed by Nasiruddin Yousuf of Dhaka Theatre, one of the most renowned companies in the country. It is based on the life of one of the first actresses in Calcutta during colonial times, who inevitably came to the art from being a courtesan. It became my mission to learn Bangla to such a level that one day I could watch the play and understand the text, instead of just getting snippets and enjoying the physicality of the show. It was beautifully designed and objects well employed to portray other characters, with Shimul Apa switching masterfully between roles herself.
Quite different but also wonderful was Rarang, a show employing tribal dance and song and telling the story of a group of adhivashis (indigenous people) who are forced to leave their land and move across the country in search of somewhere new. Chanchal Choudhury, now a famous film actor, played a stunning role as a drunken police officer, providing much of the comic relief for the play.
The one thing for me that united all of these productions was a kind of poor theatre approach. Light is always selectively used, sets are rarely elaborate and there is always a fine eye for simplistic design, with objects often being employed for many uses, widening the scope of what can be done with very limited budgets. And knowing that the performers are there simply for the love of the art, and being aware of the kinds of sacrifices that they have to make just to be there, gives an edge of appreciation to even the roughest shows.
And, as with theatre anywhere in the world, there were some really rough shows. Shows with no unity of design that limped hesitatingly through hours of dry material or howled their way through exaggerated melodrama. I spent a few second halves just longing for a show to be over while feeling my creative soul withering away inside. Given I would have been invited there by the group and been expected to visit the green room after the show to give congratulations to cast and crew I could never just leave.
They always say that in theatre you can learn more from a bad production than a good one, but I will always hold certain shows as lights to move towards in my creative practice. Two special treats came from visiting directors. One was a Tagore directed in Hindi by Usha Ganguly, a formidable female director from Calcutta, and another, part of the same Tagore festival, The Post Office by a group from Maniupr. With rigorous energy exuded by the actors, precision and restraint practiced by the directors and imaginative simplicity of the sets, these are plays I will always remember and am very grateful for the chance to have seen.
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