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| Sunday, 29 August 2004 |
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Features |  |
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An enchanted evening Menaka de Fonseka Sahabandu will celebrate 20 years of teaching The audience will be treated to a wide variety of well-known selection of classical, semi classical, broadway, and popular music, such as Tosseli Serenata, Fantasie impromptu by Chopin, Un Bel Di from Madam Butterfly by Puccini, Flower Duet from Lakme by Delibes, Pie Jesu by Andrew Lloyd Webber, to name a few. Also included in the programme is a selection of well-loved songs from broadway such as Oliver, My Fair Lady, South Pacific, a selection of Disney songs and an arrangement of Blue Bayou and Unchained Melody. Indu Dharmasena will be handling choreography and lighting. Music accompaniment will be provided by an ensemble with Thushani Jayawardana and Ajith Kodikara violin, Sureka Amerasinghe and Dilrukshi Wiratunge Flutes, Prajapa de Silva-cello, Maxie Pietersz-double bass, Shem Darius-drums with Dilan Angunawela and Menaka Sahabandu at the Piano. There will also be a guest performance by The Philharmonia Players, a popular string orchestra. Proceeds of this concert will go to the Roshan Wijesooriya Memorial Fund to be used towards building an extension to the Paediatric Ward of the Cancer Hospital Maharagama. Critic's Corner Hatharaweni Thattuwa : Not to be missed Namel Weeramuni's play Hatharaweni Thattuwa is a satire on society, politics and justice. The main exponent is a so-called lunatic who exposes the hypocrisy of our world, tellingly lays out the theme that our society has degenerated to such depths where there is no hope for redemption.
In the process we see a cross section of our society in various hues. The play explicitly throws out the Corporate involvement with the security forces in undermining the values of our society and their interplay of the dangers of consumerism which leads to a fascist state. The attempts to gag the press is poignantly revealed. The making of a fascist state is brought out very well. The play comes alive from the very beginning. He keeps the momentum and suspense from the opening. It seems like a growing organism which is a sine qua non of a good play. The audience forms a composite impression focusing gradually on the contrasts and details noticing the actors posture and moods. This is very well performed by the cast. Without noticing that our attention is being divided between the actors and the background, we register the overall appearance of the room, and the furniture. This is intelligently constructed and the set, the lighting, the costumes and atmosphere has been engendered to continuously support the words. The play follows a silence of a sort where a torrent of language is being employed. This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. There is also a different kind of gap between what is being said and done. In the visual transformation there is nothing in the dialogue and little in the stage directions to tell the audience that a change of costume is producing a change of theatrical identity which effectively amounts to a change of personality. The transformation of the lunatic is in his many roles, Captain Marcantanio of the Finger Print Department is a case in point. The response of the audience would be a piecing the stage directions and the lines of dialogue together, to construct a tentative portrait which can be adapted to collect more evidence. It is with consummate skill that the question of putting stress into the play is carried out. Without taking the visual factors the dialogue and the voice of the lunatic instills the stress when he roundly condemns the society in which we live. In his final refrain, he denies that he misled the police officers. He reiterates that what he desires to do is to purge society of its hypocrisy. The democracies of the Americans and English that is established is where there is no way out of redemption and to stand tall and keep our head held high. This he succeeds in conveying his message to the audience and this is the ultimate success of the play. An introductory theme song sets the tone and contains the message. It is basically this. Why blame the politician? Who put them there? We did, we the people, voted them into power. A slower dialogue would have been more effective which would have negated the impression of overacting. Theatre lovers should not miss this play. The play was presented at the Namel and Malini Punchi Theatre in Cotta Road, Borella. by V. R. K. de Silva Seen and the Unseen An exhibition of paintings by Karunasiri Wijeysinghe titled 'Seen and the Unseen' will be held at the B.M.I.C.H. from September 6 to 12. The special feature, of the exhibition is that the paintings are based on 30 poems, composed by the two veteran Sinhala poets, Nandana Weerasinghe and Ariyawansa Ranaweera.
The paintings are not meant to be mere illustrations of the poems, as is usually done. Instead the artist has attempted to grasp the subtle inner layers of meanings of the poems, and portray them in his canvas. In other words the colours of the artist are not mere hand maidens of the poetic word but a search into the roots of these two mediums, to try and find a harmony of sorts between them. The artist poses the question whether such a total harmony could be effectively, achieved; or else are these two mediums kindred spirits in spite of the fact that one uses colour and the other uses the word as their modes of expression. Do they travel some distance together in their search for perfection and take diverse routes at a certain critical point, or is this an impossible attempt which is bound to end in failure. These are the pertinent points thrown up by the artist, to be unravelled by the observer through a very close scrutiny of the paintings. The two poets and the artist have certain common similarities in their approach to artistic expression. The two poets do not accept poetry as the arrangement of the most suitable words, in their most suitable contexts. Instead they consider that poetic intensity could be garnered only if words are kept in unfamiliar and unconventional situations. They believe that the poet should not only soothe the words but also beat them occasionally if the need arises, as Dylan Thomas has said. The image and the metaphor are two prominent modes of these two poets. Karunasiri Wijeysinghe is an artist who strives to see the world, through intense concentration on individual objects. His eye rarely catches the wood, but is focused on the tree. A small neglected object like a solitary rugged boulder, a worn out decayed tree trunk, or an ant hill rising in a desolate landscape, becomes the metaphors, for his inner observation, into the total universe. Artistic intensity through minute observation is his forte. These are certain common features between the approaches of the artist, and the two poets. The challenge is to blend them into a total common visual picture transcending the word. |
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music
with 'Some Enchanted Evening' a concert featuring her students together
with Menaka Singers on September 4 and 5 at the Lionel Wendt Theatre at
7.00 pm on each day.
It revolves round an episode where the law-enforcing authorities are
forced to admit the bizarre nature of their involvement in pushing a
suspect to death from their fourth floor office. It portrays the utter
mendacity of the crime busters of society.
These Sinhala poems have been rendered into English language by the
versatile translator, Tilaka Dharmapriya.
