Abdus Selim’s play ‘Rise and Shine’ staged by BotTala

"Rise and Shine", a Bangla adapted mono-play by the Bangla Academy Literary Award winning writer Professor Abdus Selim, originally written by Italian playwright couple Dario Fo and Franca Rame, premiered on June 1 at Mahila Shamiti, Dhaka.

"Rise and Shine", has been directed by Mohammad Sayeed while Kazi Roksana Ruma played the lone leading role. The play contains appealing and subtle choreographic acts performed by Taufique Hassan, Hafiza Akter Zhuma, and Shahnewaj that have helped boost its overall aesthetics.

BotTala, one of the frontrunner theatre groups of Bangladesh, performed the play for four consecutive days, with a total of six shows from June 1 to 4. The play, as originally written by the playwrights, highlighted the besieged life of a female factory worker (recast as a garments worker in the Bangla version).

In her anxious search for her house keys—which is symbolised as male domination truss up—the lead character is trapped by her husband, by her baby, by her work and by her home. The play in reality reflects the life of women of all social statures, globally, who are in one way or another bound to the agelong patriarchal, political, social, religious and economic hegemony.