Playwright & Direction : Mithun Ahmed
Every episode of this story has the organization of listened speech of some culture and practice. I have made some efforts to weave a story with those speeches together, only picked out a certain style and technique while recounted the story.
Every episode of the pala is ancient cultural and mythical piece. The proscenium has also been taken from some where else. We have only stage open from all sides. That structure flashed through my mind always. I have nit followed the western dram style but rather tried to present a modern form of eastern style mingling with that of a proscenium.
I called play acting a verse speaking which comes out of narrative form and immediately gets into the domain of emotion. It is an effort of delineating various Ragas and Rasas, transformation and retransformation.
I couldn’t abstain myself from the temptation of taking this opportunity of an experimentation however small it was. I came across the various tonal similarities of chorus in Greek theater with the Dohar of Pala.
I planned this presentation on the basis of a stage craft which is very simple and not grandiose one. There is a gap between the stage performed on in the US and the settings where the story was played out,Bangladesh. As I have been away from the country physically for almost a decade, it is natural that I faced some problems in collecting data, information and theoretical elements of contemporary plays. That is why I took refuge on a very simple, well acknowledged but true story, which we confront almost everyday but have little courage and spontaneity to express that.
I tried to present the psychological elements and issues of our society through this well known story. Behind the growth of these characters, there is quite a good amount of influence of secular customs, cultural milieu, folk elements and the living styles of Bangalee life for thousands of years. I tried to portray the conflicts, contradictions and paradox of this life.
I also have tried to present the grammatical interpretations of many Ragas and Rasas.Though we are not acquainted with the literal meaning of those, but that have impressed on our life and bone marrow as we are raised as the heirs in the climate of practicing those cultures and traditions for centuries. But we don’t know that each one of these has a nexus with some story of myth behind its causes recurring events and sometimes its coincidences. And it also has similarities with well known folk stories.
This Pala has tried to find that frozen shadow less shade in the bottom of darkness, devoid of light. I tried to reach and grasp that shadow behind the shadows.
