That
night-time theatre feel!
 You are going to muse over theatre again, said my colleague when she
heard this headline. I wrote about theatre once in these columns, so
apparently I am going to say something different.
It was Nalaka Vithanage's Upan da Maranaya at the Royal College
Nawarangahala. When the audience became dark and the stage was lit up, I
spotted some bats fly across.
At first I could not grasp the situation: are these bats a part of
the play or just a signal of maintenance negligence? It took some time
before I realised the hall was full of bats, or birds like bats at least
- I could not see these birds clear enough - and it is a good sign of
poor maintenance.
Now I hope this would not freak out Royal College authorities. This
is not ironic or paradoxical or anything, but I need to talk so sweet of
those birds in the Nava Rangahala. Nalaka's play is centred around
mishaps and deceptions in the circles of politics and media. The bats
flying across the theatre just suited the play's theme. I enjoyed the
sight very much too.
If you are a muckraker who cannot tolerate even a sight of bats, I
have something to ask you. What if the play was in an open theatre? My
childhood memories started lilting with those days when my parents took
me to famous Vala theatre at the Peradeniya University. Performance is a
hard job in this theatre because the stage is positioned very low, very
much to the advantage of a frantic audience. So no point in looking for
goofs. Theatre is not perfect, just like our life.
So to muse, I would not like the idea of bringing naughty kids to the
theatre, lest they will become a killjoy for the spectators.
Entertainment will be in dust the moment they start crying out loud.
Then you have to tolerate the shadows moving to and fro in dark. That is
for logic's sake. Despite all that, I genuinely like to see kids in the
theatre. They are naughty and irritating half the time, but that itself
adds beauty to the play. It is drama within drama.
Intimate scenes around us is something confined to movie theatres.
That happens mostly at the back or boxes, very much hidden to the
general crowd. Late Dr Tissa Abeysekara once said he always loved the
darkness of the movie theatre, because it has a sensational gloominess.
Comparatively and unfortunately the stage audience is not that dark, and
no one can be up to any mischief.
Mobile talks irritate me the most. But come on, this is theatre, very
much live entertainment. I think I like to eavesdrop to a little whisper
on the mobile. There are times you cannot avoid using the mobile, when
you have to keep tabs on outside world.
We like to hear things like bird chirp in nature, but we get so
irritated by our own natural sounds like kids cries and mobile phone
whispers. It's attitude that matters. If we can enjoy birds chirp, then
sure we can make our ears tuned to the sound of our life.
Our life is now very busy as well as sophisticated. We have home
theatres and it's just a matter of buying one or two DVDs for a song and
play it and feel the movie or stage theatre rhythm. But I am afraid, we
don't get the fullest feel. We are, after all, lonely in our own home,
sometimes with two or three of the family.
We come to theatres even though we have DVD/CD players at home.
Because we like the entertainment big around us. Things like birds
flying across, kids crying and mobile whispers seem just like bonus
features that do not come along with DVDs.
There is nothing artificial in mobiles or anything - that has become
our life now. Remember theatre teaches us to admire this art of our
life, with patience. |
