Presentation by a Student From Bangladesh

On November 13, 2012 we had an exchange student from Bangladesh come into our theatre class to talk give a presentation about his native country. This was especially interesting because our class is INTERNATIONAL Baccalaureate, so it is important to be exposed to other cultures. His presentation was fascinating and informative. He told us about the famous authors in Bangladesh. Rabindranah Tagore is their equivalent of William Shakespeare and students there study him a lot. Nazrul Islam wrote about political independence. Humayan Ahmed is similar to Tim O'Brien in that he does simple writing. Finally, Michael Dutta was a famous 1800s writer. All of these authors have written plays. In Bangladesh, the plays are usually very long. I found ti especially interesting that the student told us that students in Bangladesh also study Shakespeare in school. Also, we learned that all of the movies are musicals, similar to Bollywood movies in India. Lastly, we asked the student why he came to America, and he said he wanted to learn more about the world. I found this extremely interesting because that is the whole philosophy surrounding IB, and our theatre class aims to learn about theatre with global ramifications.