A Season of Bangla Drama is the largest performance festival of the Bengali Diaspora in Europe. Now entering its 20th year, SBD has provided vital opportunities in Tower Hamlets through enhanced support for emerging writers; dramaturgy; audience development and technical training.
However, the collaborative reach of SBD goes beyond its six East London venues and annual November festival to include national and international partners.
For the last 10 years, Queen Mary has been a key strategic partner of SBD, through a collaboration with the Drama Department to provide workshops, technical support and performance space to participation companies. Working in partnership with the UK’s leading university performance department has developed the capacity for the festival to grow to the highest professional standards.
The grassroots community consultation & capacity-building embedded in SBD promotes and provides creative opportunities for local, city-wide & UK-wide communities, supporting participants in the development of their creative potential and enabling greater access to pathways in the arts.
A Season of Bangla Drama is now in its 20th year. From 2003 – 2022, there were around 200 plays of which 111 (over 50%) were new writing, many of which were tailored specifically for A Season of Bangla Drama and haven’t been performed across other platforms.
We have engaged with 3612 artists and have achieved an average overall audience figure of 2,500 per year. The festival has tackled a number of themes over the years as a way to give a voice to marginalised communities and as a way to confront difficult and controversial topics.
Highlights include acclaimed Indian actor and film star Soumitra Chatterjee joining us on stage in Homaphakhi in 2007, and performances by young people from ‘A’ Team Arts in productions such as Rapture and Nemesis: The Game Changer. Another key moment was the inclusion, in 2013 of legendary Bangladeshi theatre icon Ferdousi Mujumdar, along with Tamanna Islam, Tanjum Ara Polly and Tanven Sweety in Mukti by Theatre – an adaptation of Lee Blessing’s Independence play.
A Season of Bangla Drama has always delivered a rich programme of fringe events and activities to complement the productions on stage. This incorporates walks, talks, exhibitions and screenings to give added meaning and context to a uniquely British-Bengali Cultural festival.
There are far too many seminal moments and stellar performances to mention individually, but the festival has always been more than the sum of its parts and continues to thrive and stay relevant to an East London audience.
We have been privileged to work with partners and venues such as Queen Mary University of London (People’s Palace, the BLOC, the Pinter Studio and Arts Two), Loughborough University Here East, Rich Mix, The Space Theatre, Oxford House, Idea Stores, Wiltons Music Hall and Canary Wharf in order to spread the festival across the borough. Our thanks go to key sponsors such as Arts Council England, Canary Wharf Group and Tower Hamlets Homes.