A Season of Bangla Drama 2025
For 22 years, A Season of Bangla Drama has brought theatre, connection and community to Tower Hamlets.
A Season of Bangla Drama is the largest performance festival of the Bengali Diaspora in Europe. This year, its theme was ‘Kindness’.
Queen Mary has been a strategic partner of A Season of Bangla Drama for over ten years and was proud to once again support the Council to deliver the festival as part of our Civic University Agreement pillar ‘A Cultural Hub for East London’. Throughout November, ArtsOne and BLOC hosted a number of productions and events and saw QMUL students and staff joining local audiences, performers, and organisers in a shared celebration of kindness and creativity.
This year, 13 original theatre productions were staged across Tower Hamlets in a mixture of Bengali, Sylheti and English. These pieces examined what kindness means from different perspectives and explored important topics such as migration, women’s struggles, and friendship.
The festival also featured a whole series of fringe events. Many of these were free of charge and included other creative events including two poetry sessions, a film screening, a talk and an exhibition. Other events gave audiences the chance to engage in a more interactive way, including hosting a walk, three cultural events and six drama, arts and crafts workshops.
Altogether, A Season of Bangla Drama ran 30 events across the 30 days of November, working with 24 community arts organisations and approximately 200 artists and participants. Performances were attended by audiences of over 4000 people.
You can read more about the history of A Season of Bangla Drama and more than 10 years of Queen Mary’s partnership on the festival on the Centre for Creative Collaboration’s webpage.