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India,
Bangladesh announce joint Tagore celebrations
India and
Bangladesh Thursday announced a bouquet of programmes, including
creation of a special tourist circuit, two joint movie productions
and exhibition of paintings to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary
of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
The official 150th
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New Delhi: A major
project jointly launched by India and Bangladesh aims to dramatise
some of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's short stories, novels
and poems into an anthology of 24 plays.
"Rabindra Sahitya Natyayan" (Dramatisation of Tagore's Literature)
is a part of a literary outreach campaign to make the poet
relevant to the masses on his 150th birth anniversary.
Culture Secretary Jawhar Sircar said: "We have undertaken an
extensive dramatisation of Tagore's poetry, novel and short
stories so that they are remembered as performances in an age when
more people hear and see than read."
He said 10 young playwrights from Bangladesh and 14 from India
will "delve into the treasures and convert them into dramas".
The project is being supported by the International Theatre
Institute, a global theatre platform that promotes theatre for
world peace and as a means of cultural exchange under the umbrella
of UNESCO.
According to Ramendu Mazumdar, president of the International
Theatre Institute, "the young playwrights will meet in
Shantiniketan for a 10-day workshop mid-June to discuss and
dramatise the literary works of Tagore that they have chosen".
"They will be guided by senior playwrights," Dhaka-based Mazumdar,
who was in India for two days as part of a cultural delegation
from Bangladesh, told IANS.
"We had advertised in newspapers and received several
applications. We chose from the entries," Mazumdar said.
"The plays will be published in a volume and staged later. They
will add to the body of existing plays by Tagore," he added. The
medium will be Bengali to begin with.
Tagore was known for his powerful plays that reflected
socio-cultural milieu and realities of his time.
They touched on controversial themes like women's empowerment,
discrimination against castes, marginalisation of fringe ethnic
groups, conflicts of faith and even threat to ecology - concepts
that were new to that time.
His characters come across as radical; and the plots were
dramatic.
The poet was known to have staged his plays at home in Jorasakno
with members of his family, including women, and later at
Shantiniketan.
Some of his popular plays include "Visarjan", "Rakta Karabi", "Shesher
Kabita", "Dak Ghar", "Baikunther Khata", "Chirakumar Sabha", "Shesh
Rakkha" and "Achalaytan".
Interpretation and conservation of Tagore's literature and
manuscripts forms an important component of the joint endeavour
undertaken by the India and Bangladesh governments to celebrate
the poet's 150th birth anniversary, Sircar said.
The Dhaka-based Bangla Academy, which promotes Bengali as language
and medium of literature in Bangladesh, will publish 30 books on
Tagore in 2011-2012.
"Three treatises on Tagore have already been published and fourth
book, 'Social and Mental Thinking of Tagore' by Anisur Rahman of
Dhaka University will be published next week," Shamsuzzaman Khan,
director general of the Bangla Academy, told IANS.
Khan was a part of the cultural delegation from Bangladesh.
In the pipeline is a 1,000-page biography of Tagore, a reprint of
"Nasta Nir" (Tagore's novella), "Ektu Khani Rabindranath" (A Bit
of Tagore), Khan said.
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