Professor Dr. Mohammad Israfil (Department of Theatre and Performance Studies University of Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Israfil Shaheen brings with him
more than three decades of work and experience in the fields of performance,
theatre education, and cultural activism. In the field of theatre and
performance studies Dr. Israfil has worked as a creative director, mentor, and
academic guide to PhD, post-graduate, and undergraduate students at various
universities in Bangladesh and abroad. Israfil
Shaheen’s performance credit include direction of over 40 plays spanning over
major western playwrights such as Pinter, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Moliere,
Agatha Christi, and Beckett and classical Sanskrit dramas of Sudraka and Bhasa.
Before entering the world of
theatre as an academician, Dr. Israfil had spent a brief, yet formative period
as a theatre worker with Bangladesh’s prominent theatre group Aranyak, which
also opened opportunities for him to engage with a form of community based theatre
that became popular under the concept of “Mukto Natok.” Roughly
translated as “free theatre,” “Mukto Natok” brought forth a new dimension in
Bangladesh’s theatre scenario, which was predominantly focused on proscenium
stage in urban centres. Mukto Natok allowed Dr. Israfil to get
acquainted with the artists and performers living and practicing in far off
corners of Bangladesh. As a young theatre activist he conceptualized and
organized Mukto Natok events in distant towns and villages which are
truly the nerve-centre of Bangladesh’s performing arts. This experience of
working with marginal community paved the way for Israfil to seek mentorship
under legendary Indian theatre activists: the agitprop artist Safdar Hashmi and
third theatre theoretician Badal Sirkir. Both Safdar and Badal were
instrumental in forming Israfil’s own theory of conceptualizing a new theatre
for and by the socially ostracized members of a community.
Dr. Israfil’s approach to directorial
method has been going through significant changes in the past few years. Having
been trained into the realist-classical school, Israfil has recently been
focusing on collaborative-interactive method to in order to accommodate
opinion, critical insight, and even judgments coming from the end-line
audience. Israfil Shaheen’s emphasis on pre-production collaboration with prospective
audience necessarily involves a more inclusive and radical approach to
theatre-making. Israfil Shaheen believes that this participatory directorial
method can be highly effective in site-specific performance, which takes place
in public thoroughfares, historical sites, or in unconventional performance
spaces.
It is not surprising that
Israfil Shaheen will later base his future academic research in the domain of
street theatre, the idioms of which he had learnt under Safdara Hashmi and
Badal Sirkar in the turmoiling days of 1990s. Thus, Israfil Shaheen’s unique approach
to theatre is informed by two apparently opposite forces. On one hand, he is
eager to explore the methods and idioms of modernist western theatre that bears
the legacy of western classical tradition. On the other hand, he seeks to
explore the ‘populist voice’ through the vehicle of street performance, popular
theatre and performative rituals. Today, Dr. Israfil’s characteristic features
of theatre-making can be identified by (a) methodological
acting blended with unique local technique; (b) ethnographic research for
characterization and content development; and (c) minimalist approach to theatre-making. Dr.
Israfil’s exploration for a new approach to theatre-creation has developed into
a separate school or a particular trend in Bangladesh.
During
2020-2023, Israfil Shaheen has initiated several research and performance
projects that addresses the issue of theatre for people under social and
institutional confinement. Engaging researchers from different academic
backgrounds, these projects shall explore the effectiveness of performative art
in rehabilitation and restitution of people in various types of confinement such
as prisons, rehabilitation centres, reform houses, and correction facilities.
One of these projects, prison theatre, has received funding from University of
Dhaka for conducting research and publication.
Dr.
Israfil founded the Bangladesh Centre for Performance and Cultural Studies (BCPCS)
in 2010 with a view to train researchers in hitherto unexplored areas in
applied theatre in public spaces. In the past few years Dr. Israfil had been
developing an ideologically novel form of popular theatre with a view to engage
marginalized voices as active creators and participants. He believes not merely
in a cultural production but in a cultivating process where theatre is not a
production but a processual action. His theory of theatre embraces the public
sphere by making theatre an instrument of social, cultural and political
resurgence.
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Current Directions:
- Kajolrekha based on medieval Bengali ballad collected by Dinesh Chandra Sen in Mymensingh Geetika.
- “Siddhanta”, a translation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Measures Taken (1930)
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