They say see it to believe it. If you were one of the audience members at Chowdaiah Memorial Hall on Friday, Saturday or Sunday you would have seen the premiere of Rabindranath Tagore’s play Card Country.

The students of The Bangalore School of Speech and Drama presented Card Country directed by the founder Dr Zulfia Shaikh.

Apart from our National anthem and Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore has written many plays, short stories and poems.

Tasher Desh or ‘the land of cards’ was translated into English as Card Country by the well known writer William Radice who was a big fan of Tagore.

Card Country, one of Tagore’s lesser known plays addresses the power of the will and the need to break age old rules.

A young prince and his merchant friend set out to find some adventure and land up in Card Country where the folk are traditional, programmed and unreasoning who follow age old rules without asking any questions.

It is the lively spontaneous charisma of the prince and the witty banter of the merchant which brings about a change in their lives.

The Bangalore School of Speech and Drama was established in June 2001 and is affiliated with the Trinity College of Speech and Drama (London).

They have held five productions so far and Card Country is the sixth and the first production of an Indian author. 
Says Dr Zulfia Shaikh, “ It was really challenging to produce this particular play as it is one of Tagore’s plays and people have the misconception that he writes only serious stuff. I wanted to eliminate that and hopefully after watching this play children and adults alike will want to read more. It took us six weeks to put this play together and I’m very happy with the outcome.”

Hasnain, who plays the role of a merchant in the play adds, “ It was obviously tough in the beginning but our director did an amazing job with us. She helped us get into the skin of the character and it was really nice to be a part of this production.”