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| Wednesday, 19 January 2005 |
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Henry jayasena column Awards and felicitations The annual Drama Awards Night was held on December 19 at John de Silva Theatre with the Prime Minister attending on the invitation of the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Vijitha Herath. Mr. Herath is a nice, soft spoken young man - in sharp contrast to some of his 'firebrand' colleagues. I could not, or rather I did not attend the function because I have a permanent grouse with the Arts Council, the Sinhala Drama Panel and even the cultural Dept., about the follow-up action they always fail to take after the Drama Awards Festival is over, year after year. In fact I am rather sorry about the harsh words I spoke to the present chairman of the Drama panel, Attorney-at-Law, Douglas Siriwardene. I apologize to him unreservedly, because according to all the reports, he has done a good job of work in his first year as president of the Sinhala Drama Panel. I saw some of the news footage on the TV channels and there were quite a few things that I was happy about. I cannot say anything about the fairness or otherwise of the awards themselves. I was able to see only one of the competing plays and that play had been knocked out of the final round. I was happy about the felicitations that were made to veterans such as Maestro Premasiri Khemadasa and the evergreen Irangani Serasinghe from the Sinhala stage. From the Tamil stage and screen two eminent personalities were felicitated - Navaliyur Selvadurai and Manimekhalai Ramanathan. Mr. Selvadurai is from Jaffna and is 76 years old and he had been involved with the Tamil stage for over 52 years in over 100 plays. Ms. Manimekhalai had been involved in the Nattikuttu traditional form of theatre for a long time and she had appeared with South Indian idol Sivaji Ganeshan in the famous joint production of Pilot Premnath in which Malini Fonseka played the lead role with Sivaji. All this information was conveyed to me by my good friend and 'golaya' of sorts, Jayalath Manoratne, who compered the event in his own inimitable style. Special awards A novel feature in this year's awards was that three special awards were given to three very special persons who had served our theatre in three major 'affiliated' areas. Namely, Upali Weerasinghe for a long and painstaking career in stage lighting, Gamini Sumanasekera for his unblemished contribution to play reviews and critical analysis and Somapala Hewakapuge, my good friend-in-need, for a long and often unpaid, (or at best, underpaid) involvement in 'theatre printing' - if I may coin a phrase - which means printing posters, tickets, playbills, souvenirs et al, as cheaply as possible for us theatre people. My congratulations, nay, my warmest, heartiest 'Namaskars' to all of you, my kindred souls. Here, I use the word 'Namaskar' in rather symbolic style. In fact I am emulating the award authorities, who seem to be emulating their cultural mentors and masters - India, in the style of felicitation. This time they draped very colourful - and I am sure, very expensive - shawls around the shoulders of the recipients of those Awards of Distinction, as they ALWAYS do, in India, when great personalities are felicitated. In our tradition of course it is a 'Sannasa', 'Aktapatra' (Hand-written documents of acclamation and confirmation) or a 'Gamvara' (Gift of land) that was presented to the receiver with great ceremony and style. I believe we have to change with the times, and why not the Indian way. India has been our guru, our inspiration and our 'Minder' most of the time. My 'preamble' is getting a little 'longish' I am afraid. But I have to mention Namel and Malini Weeramuni, that irrepressible and hugely inspired couple who are the architects of that wonderful little playhouse called the 'Punchi Theatre' in Borella. I saw them also being felicitated by the Prime Minister - a very laudable act indeed. My personal feeling is that this couple should be in our permanent National Honours list for that marvellous contribution they have personally and painstakingly made with their own sweat-earned funds for the cause of theatre in this 'no-money-for culture' country! Bless you, my dear Namel and Malini! This year's Drama Festival was also very special because of what its presenter, Jayalath Manoratne said. He said "I have been getting on this stage ever since I was a child and as an adult, to collect my first major award as Best Actor, in 1974. That was thirty long years ago. I have won many awards since then. At every Awards Ceremony a Minister of State, most often the Minister of Cultural Affairs, gets on stage to distribute the awards, does so, makes many promises and goes away. He climbs these steps from one side, distributes awards, makes many promises, gets down from the other side and goes away. And those promises go away with him..." Accommodation "I want to make a request from the present Minister, Vijitha Herath. We may have made hundreds of requests over these years. Sir, forget about all that. May be they are difficult to fulfil. But this request, I am sure you will be able to fulfil. You know Sir, hundreds of theatre persons from the outstation come to Colombo. Take this festival. Lots of theatre persons have come to Colombo to participate in this festival today. They have no place to stay. Often they spend the night under the bo tree near the Pettah bus stand and come here in the morning. They can't afford private accommodation and many of them have no friends or relatives in Colombo to stay with. Please Sir, make some provision of accommodation for these people, so that they could spend the night with some measure of dignity..." Mano must have said many more things. He must have made many wise cracks that kept the audience in stitches - like the one about I.P.B., the print shop run by Somapala Hewakapuge, one of the men who were felicitated. Unfortunately the I.P.B. print press is no more. It was once a hub of activity with many 'theatre people' hanging about to get their work done. Even then we did not know what I.P.B. stood for. Anyway, with just one or two 'rollers' and hand set letters, it was slow progress. And so, Mano came out with what I.P.B. stood for - 'Inda Poddak Balanna...!' When Minister Vijitha Herath spoke, he thanked Mano for helping to shorten his speech. "He has already said many of the things I wanted to say.." said the Minister. Anyway, I do make a promise, and that is that accommodation will be provided for those that Jayalath Manoratne mentioned. We could use the building behind this Theatre (John de S. Theatre) to provide such accommodation. I have plans for many more things. Let those be talked about when they come up..." The soft-spoken Mr. Herath had said. I am rather confident that this is one promise that is going to be kept and I have a gut feeling that many more meaningful things will come our way through our youthful Minister of Culture and Heritage. I am not sorry that this year's big drama event has taken all the space in my column this week. We will get back to our 'good old times' next week. Till then dear readers, please do bear with me. **** Back **** |
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