Syed Jamil Ahmed

Syed Jamil Ahmed is a theatre director and designer based in Bangladesh, and Professor at the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. He founded the Department of Theatre and Music at the University of Dhaka in 1994 and served as its Chair till 1997. His book-length publications in English are Acinpākhi Infinity: Indigenous Theatre in Bangladesh, In Praise of Niranjan: Islam, Theatre and Bangladesh, Reading Against Orientalist Grain: Performance and Politics Entwined with a Buddhist Strain, and Applied Theatrics: Essays in Refusal. He has published extensively in academic journals, edited volumes and encyclopaedias, both at home and abroad, in Bengali and English, and has been translated in Norwegian, French, Russian, Chinese and Korean. His research interest includes indigenous and modern theatre of Bangladesh, folkloristics, applied theatre, and cultural studies. He has received two Fulbright fellowships as well as prestigious awards at home and abroad, and has served as visiting faculty in the US, UK and India. Ahmed has directed and designed acclaimed productions in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and the USA. His signature brio has evolved from a refashioning of traditional-Bengali theatrical vocabulary and indigenous archetypes for modern theatre to a comingling of the visual-metaphoric with the multilinear narratorial techniques, giving shape a unique post-dramatic inscription.