A three day programme has begun Friday at the Natmandal of DU, featuring three shows of Dhaka University theatre department’s latest production, Selim Al Deen’s “Chaka.”
Theatre lovers, who haven’t yet watched the production especially designed for intimate audience, still have the chance to experience it today and tomorrow at 7pm.
The play was premiered last Friday at the National Theatre Hall of Bangladesh Shipakala Academy to celebrate Deen’s 64th birth anniversary. The premiere show of the play, directed by young theatre artiste Sudip Chakroborthy, saw a houseful audience.
This is his 22nd directorial venture and like his previous productions, Sudip, along with the set and light designer of the play, treats the audience with lot of surprises. The tragic story of Deen’s masterpiece “Chaka” is portrayed in a circular stage, through a combination of narration, dialogue and action.
Set against the backdrop of the anti autocratic movement of the country in the late 1980s, the story zooms in on a cart-driver, along with an old man and a Santal youth, embarking on a journey to deliver a corpse of an anonymous man who was unjustly killed. They are assigned by government officials to deliver the dead body to its relatives. No one knows who the dead man was or how he died. But the address given to the cart puller is a vague one, and, being so, the team fails to deliver the corpse. Finally he, along with two others, buries the corpse.
In the play, the iconic playwright has also explored the suppression faced by the indigenous community of our country, through a Santal character. Moreover, Deen has touched the Islamic myth of the Battle of Karbala in the play. In this regard, Sudip said to Dhaka Tribune: “We, the cast and crew of ‘Chaka’ attended classes at the Department of Islamic History and Culture of DU and went to Kakonhaat of Godagari, Rajshahi to get ourselves acquainted with the lifestyle of the Santal community, for the production.”
Playing live music, the story begins with a dramatic mood where the actors of the play sit in a circle, with a very mournful mood. Throughout the play, the performance of all the actors and narrators are centered to a round object having shape of a wheel, which is placed in the middle of the stage. “We cannot move a cart in the stage, so we placed a wheel shaped object on the stage. We also wanted the wheel to be constantly on the stage, since it symbolises continuation of the changelessness in our society. On the other hand, the circular pattern of the stage is similar to the shape of a mother’s womb, the solar system, the rotation of time and infinity,” said Sudip to Dhaka Tribune.
The narrators, time to time, give very satirical descriptions of the social system that turns a youth to an unidentified corpse. At one point, they scatter dead leaves on the stage to bring an ambience of bereavement.
The lively and authentic performance of the first year and graduate students of the theatre department of DU makes the play a treat to watch. The theatre is also enriched with the presentation of traditional instruments like dhol, banshi, mondira, kasha and Santal dance recitals.
