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| Sunday, 10 March 2002 |
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Cursing, cooking, dowry-burning...
Theater-lovers will be in for something outside the ordinary as the British Council together with Center Stage Productions present The Ritual at the British Council Garden on April 5 and 7, 2002 at 7.30 p.m. Written and directed by Jehan Aloysius, this play attempts to give the audience a taste of rural Sri Lankan life from the context of "dowry-burning" cloaked in what is often dismissed as yet another "bottle-lamp accident". Jehan, a final year Arts undergraduate at the University of Colombo, has been writing plays since 1993. One of his early scripts Stormy Weather (then titled The Music Box) was performed at the Inter-University Drama Festival in 1999. Also an accomplished actor and director, his most recent achievement as a playwright was as a Grataien Award nominee in 2001 for the selection of palsy titled The Screaming Mind.
The Ritual is a result of Jehan's first collaboration with the International Playwrights' Residency in 2001, organized by the Royal Court Theatre (RCT) of London in conjunction with the Artists' Repertory Theatre (ART) of Bangalore. As its title suggests, the play is immersed in 'rituals' relating to marriage, reproduction, dowry-burning, cursing, cooking... and mere survival. All of the action takes place within the kitchen of one rural family. Nevertheless, this is household deeply conscious of the village outside the mud walls.What makes the production fascinatingly 'different' is its experimentation with integrating local religio-cultural operatic theater with modern secular drama. Thus English theatre audiences will encounter low-country theatre traditions involving kolam and thovil complete with familiar tragi-comic characters such as Nonchi Akka, Andaberakaraya, Lenchina and Maru Yakshaya. The vitality of the play lies in the fact that these indigenous theatrical traditions and forms, which have been extensively explored so as to extract their dramatic potential, blend and intersect with the action of the play, providing a complete theatre experience. The cast includes well-known English theatre personalities such as Tracy Holsinger, Avanti Perera and Anushka Pereira as well as talented newcomers, Vishvamithra Ahangama, Shanaka Perera, Ranga Sovis, Rasan Amintha and Micheal Jayewardene. They have been approaching the script through experimental theater techniques and workshop activities. Therefore, the end-product promises some "fiery" entertainment, yet through a sensitive exploration of pressing socio-cultural issues. The Ritual will be presented in the form of kolam maduwa, in keeping
with the staging practices of the indigenous theatre, at the British
Council Garden. Finally, as the play contains explicit langauge adult
audiences are encouraged. Landscapes of rural life
Palitha Gunasinghe's paintings underline not only a craving for creative output, but also even a deep consciousness of the culture, which is inseparably linked with our roots. As an artist Palitha is equally fascinated by the simplicity of secular life as well as the sanctity of spiritual sites.
Mother and her relatives Mothers, in most cases, have their own sisters and brothers. How do you identify them? All depends on the language you speak. In English, for instance, her sister is called an 'aunt' and her brother an 'uncle'. These words, however, are also used to refer to the sisters and brothers of one's father as well. For English makes no distinction between aunts and uncles of one's mother and father. In Sinhala, the situation is quite different. Mother's sisters are also denoted by the word 'amma', with a modifier in front to indicate whether they are older or younger than she is. If she is older, the adjective 'loku' (big) is added to form 'loku amma' and if she is younger, the adjective 'punci' (small) is added to form 'punci amma'. Kandyan Sinhalese use the adjective 'kuda' (small) to form 'kudamma.' Mother's brother, however, is identified as a 'mama', whether he is older than the mother or not. The adjectives 'loku' (big) 'podi' (small) and 'punci' (small) are used before the word 'ma:ma:' to place them on a scale in terms of age, not in relation to the mother but in relation to themselves. Thus the eldest one will be called 'loku ma"ma' even though he may be younger than your mother. There are a few other relatives in some Sinhalese families who are known by the term 'amma'. One is the grand-mother who is called 'kiri amma' (milk-mother) by the Kandyan Sinhalese. 'kiri amma' can be the mother of one's mother or father. She is also called 'attamma:' 'muttamma:' or 'hin amma:' in certain areas. In some families, the step-mother is called 'kudamma:' In the low-country and the urban areas, the grandmother is 'a:cci' but sometimes the word 'amma' is also added after it to form 'a:cci amma:' |
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Quite
a few paintings represent the life of fisher folk in diverse situations.
Gunasinghe has a penchant for depicting peasants and fisher folk rather
than the elite. Light and shade are applied with dexterity enhancing the
overall effect. This is his third solo exhibition of water colour
paintings depicting the environment and rural life in a style of his own,
opens at the Alliance Francaise Art Gallery, 11 Barnes Place, Colombo 7 on
Friday March 15 and will continue till Friday March 22
