Prachyanat stages Bon Manush

 

Theatre troupe Prachyanat staged its much-acclaimed production Bon Manush at the Experimental Theatre Hall of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy yesterday evening. 
The troupe premiered the play as its 27th theatre production based on The Hairy Ape, which is written by Eugene O'Neill and directed by Barker Bakul, at the same venue on May 18, 2013.
The play displays O’ Neill’s social concerns for the oppressed industrial working class. The Nobel Laureate playwright’s drama features how unjustly the working class is treated through the tragedy of a brutish person named Yank. 
The play begins with sombre vocals and the workers of the ship gesticulating in a bestial manner, swaying from left to right, with two men overboard monitoring their movements. 
The director takes the liberty to illustrate the zoo using the social dimension. The play also illustrates the end through which an actor comes on stage and shouts ‘another world is possible’ and a group of gorillas being affectionate to Yank, giving him a cap.  It is Che Guevara’s cap. The play will end with a rhythmic group dance. 
‘The Hairy Ape’ is an expressionist play which focuses about social concern for the oppressed industrial working class, especially the industrial environment is presented as poisonous and dehumanizing; the world of the rich, superficial and dehumanized.
Yank a brutish, a careless laborer who feels safe and sound as he stokes the engines of an ocean liner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines.When the weak but the rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity.
He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere—neither with the socialites neither on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. 
Finally he is reduced to seeking a relative being with the gorilla in the zoo and dies in the animal's embrace.The show of the play was appreciated by audiences for its acting style and locative choreography.
Rifat Ahmed Nobel composed and played its music and Parvin Sultana Koli choreographed them while the stage and light designed by ABS Xem.