Arguably only second to Shakespeare in terms of popularity and stage life, Henrik Ibsen’s plays were translated, published and occasionally staged in erstwhile East Pakistan, today’s Bangladesh, in the 1960s. However, the regular performance of his plays began in 1993, more than two decades after Bangladesh's liberation in 1971, with an adaptation of his famous play A Doll's House by Kanthashilon under Khaled Khan’s direction in Dhaka in 1993. The Centre for Asian Theatre (CAT) and its artistic director Kamaluddin Nilu, himself a renowned actor who is now based in Oslo University, Norway played a pivotal role in presenting Ibsen to the Bangladeshi audience. The first Ibsen play the group produced was an adaptation of Ghosts, Krishnabibar in 1996. Adapted by Ahmed Reza and directed by Nilu, the performance dealt with “women’s struggle for their cherished emancipation from the inhibitions of society as Ibsen depicts in the play” (Reza, 1996). Over the next one and a half decade there was noticeable enthusiasm to perform Ibsen with CAT staging The Wild Duck, Peer Gynt, A Doll’s House, Brand, etc. Other theatre groups also chipped in. CAT held seminars, symposia, workshops and organized international conferences. 2009 marks as a watershed in Ibsen production and scholarship in Bangladesh when CAT organised in the capital Dhaka, one of “the largest Ibsen festivals to date” (Helland, 2015). Theatre groups from various countries including Egypt, India Iran, Nepal, Pakistan and the hosts Bangladesh took part in the event.
Nevertheless, there have been no major Ibsen productions in the country ever since the 2009 festival. Seemingly Ibsen has disappeared from Bangladesh with no plays by him featuring in the theatre repertory this day. What can be the reasons for Ibsen’s ‘absence’ from contemporary Bangladeshi theatre? Does this absence have something to do with the shift in Norway’s soft power (Huq, 2019) which visibly does not prioritise Ibsen any longer? The paper seeks to problematise Ibsen’s ‘absence’ in Bangladesh by reflecting on the responses collected through questionnaire and interviews of theatre activists, organisers, academics and other stakeholders of the country.
Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman is professor, Department of English and Modern Languages, and Director, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Abbasuddin Ahmed Research & Study Centre, Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). Dhaka He graduated from Dhaka University, and received his MPhil and PhD degrees from the Centre for Ibsen Studies, Oslo University. He was Dean of Arts and Humanities School; Head of English Discipline; Director, IQAC and Director (in-charge) of Fine Arts Institute, Khulna University, a reputed public university of Bangladesh, where he worked for more than two decades. With Professor Fakrul Alam he co-edited Translation Studies: Exploring Identities published in 2015. Ahsanuzzaman directed Ganashatru (2006), an adaptation of An Enemy of the People; Ninaad (2017; Roar), an adaptation of A Doll’s House; and Hamlet (2018) in Khulna University. His most recent directorial work was The Merchant of Venice (with Nuren Saira) in April this year. Interested in Translation and Performance Studies, Shakespeare, and Ibsen, his recent publications on Ibsen include two book chapters “Artifact as Digihistory: Re-viewing Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh Through Ibsen’s Brand” in Performance Arts: Research in the Age of Digital Revolution (Springer Nature 2023) and “Constructing a New Identity Space for Women in Post-colony: Sambhu Mitra’s Production of A Doll’s House” in Ibsen in the Decolonised South Asian Theatre (Routledge 2023).
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