BotTala premieres 25th production ‘Jojongondha Maya’ tonight

BotTala Theatre Company marks a milestone tonight as it premieres its 25th production, "Jojongondha Maya," at 7:30 pm in the Experimental Theatre Hall of the National Theatre. Two more shows follow tomorrow at 5pm and 7:30 pm. Written by Badruzzaman Alamgir and directed by Imran Khan, the production delivers a taut, haunting meditation on memory, loss and the long, bruising weight of waiting.

The story unfolds in Latiputi, a fictional village shaped by the shadow of Kumirpir — a spiritual guide who taught farmers to claim their rights. His defiance cost him his life. For daring to "open people's eyes," Kumirpir is killed, but his teachings are carried forward by Kurumani, who becomes both witness and custodian of his legacy.

Her own life is marked by another wound: she sends her son Jahar to fight for land and dignity, and he never returns. When Alfred Pahan — a magnetic figure who embodies hope and liberation — arrives in the village, Kurumani dares to believe again. But Pahan, too, disappears. The village learns the cruel symmetry of its history: even prophets of change can vanish without fulfilment.

The play slips across eras with deliberate fluidity — from the Liberation War to the silent decades that follow, then back more than a century — refusing to pin its grief and longing to a single time. Instead, it speaks to a deeper, cyclical truth: some struggles never end, and some wounds echo across generations.

Playwright Badruzzaman Alamgir said he wrote the play "a few years ago, from a kind of trance." He added that its title and emotional core emerged from "a strange intimacy between distance and nearness." For him, the idea of waiting is a moral barometer of society: "Waiting is a deep human measure. You can judge a community by how it honours the dead and how long it can wait."

Director Imran Khan recalls discovering the script in September 2023, recognising at once its aching centre — "a mother waiting for her lost child, and an entire community waiting for liberation." He blends local theatrical traditions with fragments of Central Asian form, creating a staging that deliberately leans into the uncanny. "Viewers will make their own meanings," he said.

The cast includes Samina Luthfa, Mohammad Ali Haider, Kazi Roksana, Golam Mahbub, Monira Khatun, Mun Islam, Niranjan Das, Ashraful Islam and Shahadat Hossain. Music is shaped by Palash Nath and Chandrabati Eva; costumes by Mohsina Akter; and lighting by Dhiman Chandra Barman.

In its essence, "Jojongondha Maya" positions personal grief against the vast landscape of collective forgetfulness. It asks a question that feels both old and newly urgent: after the dust of struggle settles, do the promised returns — the sons, the freedoms, the futures — ever come back to those who waited?

For BotTala, whose recent works include "Sakhi Rangamala" (2023), the new production marks another bold step in its exploration of history, myth and the political heart of ordinary lives.