The British Council, in collaboration with Dhaka Theatre, has recently staged the technical show of its physical storytelling theatre piece titled “Noishobde ’71” (’71 in Silence) at Bangladesh Mohila Samity in the capital’s New Baily Road.

It has been produced as a part of celebrating The British Council’s 70th anniversary in Bangladesh and also Bangladesh’s 50th year of independence, said a media release.  

The theatre piece is directed by Ramesh Meyyappan, a Glasgow-based Singaporean theatre-maker who developed performances using an eclectic mix of visual and physical theatre styles. The 30-minute performance includes 15 artists with disabilities from eight divisional cities of Bangladesh and focuses on the country’s Liberation War through different acting methods.

This activity was a part of the DARE (Disability Arts Redefining Empowerment) project led by the British Council in partnership with Dhaka Theatre.

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DARE is a project aimed at building an understanding and confidence amongst the disability and the arts sector in Bangladesh. It is meant to dispel the social stigmas associated with disability, and build an accessible bridge between arts, disability, and society.

DARE was launched in 2019. Since then, it has been working in eight divisional cities in Bangladesh where both artists with disabilities and artists from local theatre organisations are participating together in order to get a better idea about how to work on disability theatre to create a sustainable platform for disability arts.