In 1966, when Bangladesh was still the eastern province of Pakistan, the theatre scene of the province, East Pakistan, was a terra incognita – to the greater world because hardly any information was available, and to the State because it chose to overlook it as irrelevant to the Islamic ethos. What played out in the urban areas, nevertheless, were by and large inconsequential social melodramas produced by amateur clubs. Professionalism in theatre was unknown, except in the indigenous performance circuit of the rural areas. At this time, Zia Hyder, serving as a cultural officer in the middle rung of hierarchy at Bangla Academy (a state-funded academy established for the development and promotion of Bengali language and culture), decided to jump off the run-of-the-mill middleclass urban…
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Citation: Ahmed, Syed Jamil. "Zia Hyder". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 June 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14564, accessed 22 December 2024.]
