From the outset, Rangamancha has taken on two parallel creative projects. One is a stage adaptation based on stories from Humayun Ahmed’s “Misir Ali” series, a psychological thriller that remains one of the most influential works in Bangla popular literature. Rehearsals for the production are already underway.

Dhanmondi Lake began as part of a natural water system before being reshaped through planning decisions that accompanied the growth of the neighbourhood. Over the decades, it has absorbed new roles as a recreational space, ecological corridor, and social meeting ground. The exhibition traced these shifts with care, presenting the lake as an accumulation of layers formed through use, intervention, neglect, and attachment.

Out of 7,125 submissions, only 60 films made the cut. Representing 44 countries, the list includes just one Bangladeshi entry, “Scarlet Echoes”, written and directed by young filmmaker Hemantaa Sadeeq. The film is set against the backdrop of Bangladesh’s historic July 2024 mass uprising.

The story follows Bhashan, a child found floating in the waters of the Ganges and taken in by a childless fishing couple from Koshdanga. After the death of his adoptive parents, the now-grown Bhashan begins to grapple with an unsettling question: what is his religion, and where does he belong?

Six plays will be staged across the festival, held under the theme “Andhar Katuk Monchaloke” (Let the stage light cut through the darkness), framing theatre as both artistic practice and social inquiry.

The book was launched today evening at the Crowne Plaza Ballroom in Gulshan-2, Dhaka, at an event organised by Archiconnect and attended by architects, academics, planners, students, cultural figures and members of the media, marking a significant moment for contemporary architectural discourse in Bangladesh.

Architecture does not have that luxury, or even wants it. It is meant to be entered, tested, and lived inside. "Parallels" leans into that truth, treating architecture as something that unfolds through experience rather than something completed at first glance.

The final drama, “Odyssey,” draws from Homer’s ancient epic of exile, survival and return. Reimagined for the stage, the production foregrounds Odysseus’s long journey as a metaphor for endurance and moral testing, allowing a classical text to speak to contemporary experiences of displacement, uncertainty and perseverance.

As part of the opening day’s events, legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s classic film “Heerak Rajar Deshe” was screened on Saturday at 6 pm at the Bhoirobee office in Dhanmondi.

Rooted in the enduring conflict of human existence, the play navigates birth, death, crime and the impossibility of true communication through a careful interplay of dialogue and silence. Using symbolic and aesthetic devices, it examines how language both connects and fractures human relationships—how what is spoken often fails, and what remains unspoken carries its own weight.

In a city where conversations around gender and representation are frequent, moments of genuine re-calibration remain rare. “The Other Voice” arrives at Bengal Shilpalay on January 28 not as a slogan-driven exhibition, but as a visual argument—one that insists women’s artistic practices in Bangladesh cannot be reduced to footnotes, themes, or exceptions.

Walking through the exhibition feels like stepping into a world of bold and lively colours. Instead of canvas, many artworks are painted on steel rickshaw backs, staying true to the original form.

“Lutfar Pradeep” is a solo performance by veteran actor Chitralekha Guha, her first one-woman stage act in a career spanning more than four decades. Describing the work, Guha said it is “the story of a resolute woman who may break, but never bends,” adding that the play blends personal emotion with historical reflection. “I feel deeply moved to be part of such a story,” she said.

Standing amid a clamorous social and political landscape, the production attempts to hold up a mirror to society, the state, and the inner lives of individuals—without dialogue, spectacle, or easy resolution.

Set roughly fifteen centuries in the past, the narrative refuses the comfort of historical distance. Instead, it uses Khona’s story to interrogate questions that remain unresolved: how women’s knowledge is dismissed, how class and authority shape truth, and how power silences voices that challenge it. The play’s central argument is unambiguous—oppression often begins at home, long before it becomes institutional.

Published by Unicorn and distributed locally by University Press Limited, the book resists the narrow frames through which Bangladesh has often been viewed since its independence in 1971. International narratives have long leaned on images of poverty, disaster, and despair. Grey’s work proposes something far more radical: a Bangladesh alive with texture, dignity, contradiction, and irrepressible energy.

Under his direction, the troupe has staged 16 productions, including “Kanjus,” “In Search of an Honest Man,” “Election Caricature,” “Shakuntala,” “The Mousetrap,” and “Dewan Gazir Kissa”. These productions have earned praise from audiences and critics alike on stages across Sydney and Melbourne.

Late playback singer Bashir Ahmed will receive a posthumous honour, while legendary vocalist Syed Abdul Hadi and iconic magician Jewel Aich will be conferred lifetime achievement awards.

Written in 1899, “When We Dead Awaken” was Ibsen’s last dramatic work before his death. Often described as his most autobiographical play, it confronts the cost of artistic ambition, the burden of unrealised desire, and the uneasy space between creation and human intimacy. More than a century later, its themes remain strikingly contemporary.

In an interview, poet Richard Siken says, “Art doesn’t come from trauma, art comes from curiosity.” And we are most curious when the emotions we feel are so intense that even more than tending to them or managing to live through them, understanding them feels as crucial as breathing. Living with grief is painful, but living through meaningless grief is impossible. It is easy to mistake this exhibition as portrayals of trauma, of grieving, but such can’t be said when that is the reality people exist within. But it is just an exhibition of resistance, resilience and endurance than of torture and exploitation, sometimes more former than the latter.