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| Sunday, 25 September 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Sanda Langa Maranaya at Elphinstone Theatre : The Best Play of the year 2005
The financial assistance to the show is provided by the National Savings Bank (NSB) under its programme of promotion and preservation of national art in Sri Lanka. Thus, this is a collaborative effort of three prominent institutions in Sri Lanka - the ITN, the NSB and the Lanka Children's and Youth Theatre Organisation (LCYTO), the leading producer of musical theatre for children and youth. According to theatre critiques and academics, Gracia Lorca is one of the most poetic playwrights in the 20th Century. The story of the play is a triangle of passionate love among a bridegroom, a married man, and a young bride. The play basically is a tragedy of missed love, focusing certain universal themes such as extremism, intolerance, and inflexibility in society which makes it relevant for all times. For its high drama, freedom of thought and relentless tension, Sanda Langa Maranaya, has been dazzling and entrancing the Sri Lankan audiences, say theatre critics. ######### SEDNA to assist amateur artists by Vimukthi Fernando
Upali Arambewela, Additional Director General of the Rupawahini Corporation and Manel Abeyaratne, Coordinating Secretary to Her Excellency the President, were the guests of honour. "It is a dream come true," says SEDNA's founder artist Jayantha Tissera. Calling himself a "self made artist" he is enthusiastic about assisting amateur artists. "This is not a commercial venture. This was built with the motive of serving the young generation. Though there is an aesthetic component in each and every human, all are not artists. In my opinion, in Sri Lanka art has become a commercial venture. The younger generation is neither introduced to proper art nor given enough facilities. SEDNA will be a learning ground for talented children and a haven for amateur artists," says Tissera. Other services that Tissera will provide through SEDNA will be free exhibition facilities for talented child artists and introduce their work to the world through SEDNA's website. Developing the Sri Lankan style in art through networking with artists around the country is also one of his aims. SEDNA provides free exhibition facilities for amateur artists who have no exhibition facilities. They can request for these facilities by contacting the gallery at No. 30/22, Charles Place, Rawathawattha, Moratuwa. Phone 011-2648694. ############ Sri Lanka: A woman's view Photography exhibition by American columnist at the Lionel Wendt
Byard describing herself says, "I've led a charmed life: I've jumped out of an airplane, was head-butted by a shark, learned to fly on a trapeze, tried hang gliding. I've driven a racecar, slammed a golf ball the length of a fairway, and learned how to stir macrobiotic food in a North-South direction. Amazingly, I've lived to write about it. "Three Christmases ago I left California bound for the Maldives on what was to have been a simple, 9-day location story for Sport Diver Magazine. On the last day there, I decided to come to Sri Lanka for Aurveda treatment and some shopping. Once on the island I fell madly for everything Sri Lankan and stayed. I stayed because I could not stop taking photographs of the children with their giant, black-as-night eyes, of the Buddhist monks with their skin contrasting against their brilliant orange robes, the muscled arms of low-country drummers as they held a beat all night long, the ancient ruins of long ago kings, baby elephants hiding from the scorching sun in shadows cast by the hulk of their mothers, and the island's pristine beaches. Since Sri Lanka is a complex and full of many cultures that I have yet to explore, villages to visit and old people, children, fathers and mothers whose faces will undoubtedly capture my heart, there are many photography collections yet to come. Sri Lanka - a woman's view is simply the first," says Byard. ######## 'Uncertain journeys' An exhibition of paintings titled 'Uncertain Journeys' by Olga Dimitri will be on display at the Alliance francaise de Kandy until September 30.
It is at once her foster land and her soul, and she has spoken about it with great strength and certainty. Olga Dimitri has been living in Sri Lanka for 12 years, ever since she came from urban Moscow to live with her husband on tea estate in the central hills near Kandy. This past year, Olga has been painting for an exhibition in Canada. She completed a commissioned mural in a large yoga studio and had an exhibition in Vancouver, presented by the West Coast Gay Men's Society and the Roundhouse Art Centre. In Vancouver, however, she reached for something new, something experimental, and she expressed her personal and cultural transitions through oil on paper and collages. They are of particular interest because they were completed in the first three or four weeks of her stay in Canada. This is the time when the newcomer's agoraphobia of the West's vastness and coldness, together with the awe of its evolution and futuristic beauty, is usually at its peak. This paintings make up the other portion of the current exhibit, which then becomes a bold and sincere dialogue between her journey to the West and her return to the familiar, now seen differently. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Kaushalya Fernando's Sanda Langa Maranaya, which became the Best Play of
the year 2005, will be on the boards of Elphinstone Theatre on September 30
at 3.30 and 6.30 p.m. respectively. Sanda Langa Maranaya is the Sinhala
version of Blood Wedding of Garcia Lorca, one of the most celebrated Spanish
playwrights. Sanda Langa Maranaya is the latest presentation in a series of
stage plays organised by the Welfare Society of Independent Television
Network (ITN). 
It is a quiet surrounding though close to the main road. Within the walls
is a different world and soon you are lost in the shades and shapes
displayed. 'SEDNA' is how it is named, the very first art gallery that
opened for the benefit of the township of Moratuwa and its surroundings.
"New and different," was the view of those who flocked to SEDNA, at its
official inauguration recently by veteran artist, Tissa Gunawardene. 
Sri Lanka - A woman's view - the work of photographer/journalist Lucy
Llewellyn Byard will be exhibited at the Lionel Wendt Gallery, in the Harold
Peiris room from September 30 to October 2 from 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. 
The painter returned to Sri Lanka four months ago and used art to
integrate the transition of her experiences. Her last paintings glow within
a medium of copper and graphite. To look into the graphite darkness and find
the copper light just below the surface - a surface torn and scarred,
smeared and wounded, stretched and melted, open and bulging - is to see into
the experience of her matured perspective of this land, Sri Lanka. 
