RU students to stage ‘The Verdict’, ‘Rhinoceros’, ‘Odyssey’ today

EPIC, the student-run cultural platform at Rajshahi University, returns on Saturday with its fifth theatre chapter, renewing its commitment to the stage as a space for inquiry, resistance and imagination.

To be held at the Shahid Sukhranjan Somaddar Auditorium (TSCC) from 4:00pm to 8:30pm, EPIC Chapter V places stage drama at its centre, framing the evening around three plays that span moral judgment, political conformity and epic journey.

The programme opens with “The Verdict,” an original production developed by students of the Department of English. While details are being kept deliberately spare, organisers describe it as a courtroom-centred narrative that probes justice, authority and the fragile line between truth and power—continuing EPIC’s tradition of socially alert, student-authored work.

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That inquiry deepens with “Rhinoceros,” a Bangla adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s landmark absurdist play. First staged in 1959, Ionesco’s work is widely read as an allegory of mass conformity and the rise of authoritarian thinking, where townspeople inexplicably transform into rhinoceroses. By reworking the text in Bangla, EPIC brings the play’s political unease closer to local realities, using absurdity to question how societies normalise violence and surrender individuality.

The final drama, “Odyssey,” draws from Homer’s ancient epic of exile, survival and return. Reimagined for the stage, the production foregrounds Odysseus’s long journey as a metaphor for endurance and moral testing, allowing a classical text to speak to contemporary experiences of displacement, uncertainty and perseverance.

Alongside the dramas, the evening will feature six non-theatrical performances, including songs, dance and recitations such as “Sukher Lagi Chahe Prem,” “Melody of Sweet Sorrow,” and “Puraton Bhritto,” offering tonal contrast and cultural breadth.

Founded in 2017 and run entirely by current students of the English department, EPIC previously staged four chapters before pausing in 2022. Organisers say Chapter V marks both a return and an expansion—larger in scale, but rooted in the same belief in accessible, inclusive cultural practice.

Supported by North Burg, Graphix Assist and Smart Choice, EPIC Chapter V aims to reclaim the university stage as a space where students test ideas, confront inherited texts, and assert that culture, when practiced freely, remains a form of civic courage.