The New Nation - Internet Edition

Entertainment Desk

Theatre group Subachan Natya Sangsad will honour a theatre group of outside Dhaka with the Arju Smriti Natya Padak from this year.

The group will also receive Tk 25,000, a crest and a certificate, said the organisers at a briefing in the city on Wednesday.

Subachan’s Abu Daud Ashrafi, theatre critic Biplab Bala and Director Kamaluddin Kabir were present, among others, at the briefing.

The organisers have placed 12 points as requirements to appeal for the award.

The groups, which have been working for at least five years and have at least twenty members, will be eligible for the award.

Among others, a group should produce at least one play every year and they should stage the play at least three times in a year.

"The organisation should have the experience of staging plays three times outside the home district. A group should have at least a director or playwright or a music director or a set designer," said Daud.

The organisers will arrange the award giving ceremony at 6:00pm on June 28 at Mahila Samity on Bailey Road.

Adviser to the Cultural, Women and Children and Primary and Mass Education Ministries Rasheda K Chowdhury will be present as chief guest.

Theatre personalities including Ramendu Mazumder, Ataur Rahman, Mamunur Rashid, Nasiruddin Yousuff and M Hamid will be present as discussants.

The ceremony will be followed by the presentation of Kshudhita Pashan, based on Rabindranath Tagore.

Prior to the ceremony, Subachan will arrange a seminar on the possibility of scripting plays based on Tagore's short stories.

Professor Bishwajit Gosh of Dhaka University will present the keynote paper while Professor Momtajuddin Ahmed, Ataur Rahman, Dr Karunamaya Goshwami, Dr Syed Manzoorul Islam, Khaled Khan and the young theatre activist will take part in the discussion.

According to the organisers, they will arrange the award giving ceremony every year to commemorate the death of the theatre activist ASM Arju Rahman, who died on June 27 in 1999.