Commissioned by Mahila Sangha, Rose Bruford College and Tara Arts collaborated in 2008-9 to produce “Rokeya’s Dream”, a short play commemorating the life and work of Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, and particularly her visionary short story, “Sultana’s Dream”. The production played seven performances in March 2009 across London, and was recorded to video.
The project is now into its next phase. While the first phase as to look at the resonance of Begum Rokeya’s original 1905 piece for contemporary young British Asian women, the project wishes to examine how other communities react to the material, and how they might express those thoughts through dramatic expression. Like the original, the London production focused on the tensions between tradition and modernity; and young Asians are particularly aware of living with multiple cultural traditions. The obvious step now is to take the project back to its roots in Bengal, and to exchange perspectives on the place of women, on ecology and technology, and on dramatic expression.
While the London version of the script was produced by a relatively formal process of composition, the production team felt that the most important part of the project was the consultations with women from the Bengali community. For future parts of the project, therefore, the company wish to use theatre techniques to make a ‘creative conversation’, producing alternative versions of the production through drama workshops. The Kolkata version is intended to explore the tensions being experienced by contemporary young people in the sub-continent. The outcome will be a series of scenes, captured both as a playtext/score, and on video. As research material it will be contribution to the Centre for Multicultural and Intercultural performance, and be presented at this year’s symposium event.
The longer term ambition is to work with a series of communities to produce up to six reactions to the original text from different parts of the world, in the run-up to the Cultural Olympiad in London 2012. Taking a work, and a life, which has inspired so many young people, speaks to Olympic values in a very special way.
The project is visiting three Universities in West Bengal: Rabindra Bharati and Viswa Bharati, both of which have strong links with Rabindranath Tagore, and traditions of poetry and drama; and with Burdwan University. The company will also contribute to the centenary celebrations of the school founded by Rokeya.
1 For Rose Bruford College the project has a number of important aspects. WP research has shown that sustained engagement with communities is important in demonstrating commitment to engaging with their concerns. As we are under-represented with Asian students, this project shows a long term interest in both content and form of Bengali culture, both in the sub-continent and among the British Asian community.
2 From a research perspective, it develops our collection of applied material from South Asia (the Centre for Multi-cultural and intercultural performance) and fits with Research aim of looking at the development of intercultural encounters. The team have agreed to feed back on the project at Symposium, and will be collecting high-res video footage of their visit, as well as paper documentation of the process.
3 It fulfils our policy of supporting our graduate ‘emerging artists’, in developing links with Tara Arts and Mahua through Showmi Das, and in script development in an important area. The Rokeya project was the winner of the CIF award in 2008; and has a long term plan for developing as a company.
4 Arts organisations in Tower Hamlets have expressed an interest in the project – Chris Elwell from Half Moon has asked to be kept informed; the project has already played Brady Centre, and in the longer term has potential for the MA in Theatre for Young Audiences.
5 Through the graduate company, we are making first contact with one of India’s 8 national listed Drama Schools (Rabindra Bharati University), and setting up a local schools partnership. The links with the work of Tagore are also important in understanding modern India, and there will be a visit to Viswa Bharati and the University of Burdwan. Given the work John Martin of Pan Intercultural has been doing, there is potential here for mutual support, through the MA in Drama for Development.
6 The material of the project has implications for climate change and women’s empowerment, both of which are of interest our interlocutors in India, to see what we make of them.
7 Showmi Das seems to have a good sense of where to place media coverage, in specialist papers and on Bengali language radio and TV; the project will also feature on Voice of America (India).
8 If in the future we were to fundraise among the Indian / Muslim communities, it is important to show we have contributed to community actions: there may be interest in supporting this aspect of the college’s work in the longer term.
