An eleven day international theatre festival titled “Bottola Rongomela 2019” ended on Tuesday at the Liberation War Museum in Agargaon. Ekushey Padak winning actor Mamunur Rashid was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the closing ceremony.
A total of ten theatre troupes from Bangladesh, Iran, India, Nepal, and Spain took part in this festival - providing Bangladeshi theatre enthusiasts a rare opportunity to enjoy foreign plays. However, the audiences couldn’t understand the foreign dialogues of the Spanish and Nepali plays without captioning or “surtitles.”
Apart from the daily theatre performance at 7:30pm at the museum’s main auditorium, the festival also arranged live performances at the open air Nadim Moncho everyday at 6pm.
Jyoti Dogra from Mumbai peforming in the play Black Hole on the 10th day of the festival | Courtesy
Five documentary films were screened during the festival- Ferdousi Majumder: Jibon O Obhinoy, Behind the Curtain- A Journey with Bibhas Chakraborty, Moncho Sharothi: Ataur Rahman, Let There Be Light (documentary on Tapas Sen), and The Conjurer (documentary on Syed Jamil Ahmed).
There were also three master-classes on music, dance, and scene-work in theatre. The conductors were Shimul Yousuf from Dhaka Theatre, Dhali Al Mamun from Chittagong University, and Shoibal Basu from Jalpaiguri, India.
Everyday during the festival, one actor and one backstage hand from a different division were recognized for their lifelong devotion to theatre arts. These daily award ceremonies saved the best for last. Right before the closing performance of Khona (written by Samina Lutfa, directed by Muhammad Ali Haider and performed by Bottola), veteran thespian Mamunur Rashid was given the Bottola Lifetime Achievement Award 2019.
Mamunur Rashid founded the theatre troupe Aranyak in 1972. He acted in films like Monpura (2009), Mrittika Maya (2013), and Khancha (2016). He received the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1982 and Ekushey Padak in 2012.
