Ravana’s dream:

On parallel universes

Ishara Jayawardane

An epic production of the magic of Harsha Makalande’s imagination and the science of a civilisation that existed, Ravana’s Dream, stretched the boundaries of what can be achieved through innovation and passion and mesmerised the audience that gathered recentlyat the Stein studio, Ratmalana to witness the ground breaking theatrical performance – Ravana’s Dream. Daily News met Harsha Makalande the director to discuss the play.

“Actually I would say it was more like a musical done on the lines of a Western production or Broadway. But we were not trying to copy their methods, We tried to adjust it to our own environment and our own method of working. We tried to use our methods and our systems. We created everything, the organisation of it and the management of it. I wrote the music and I wrote the words, the drama script, the lighting and I designed the clothes,” said writer and director of Ravana’s Dream, Harsha Makalande. Ravana’s Dream is more like a Science Fiction story about parallel universes. It deals with quantum physics.

“Ravana lives in a parallel universe and gets to know of our universe and the problems faced by our professionals like scientists and artists – they are not getting the due recognition. So he pays a visit to our world and finds that his brother Vibhishana rules the parallel universe we live in. Vibhishana welcomes him and he is taken into the palace where he meets Sita,” elaborated Makalande.

According to Makalande, throughout history, Ravana of Sri Lanka is depicted as a bad person. “This is very bad for us and I don’t believe he was a bad person. He was such an intelligent and powerful king. This is a political thing and must be corrected. He was one of our leaders. He had knowledge of aeronautics. There is evidence that ancient Sri Lanka had airports. Variyapola means Airport. Var is Air and Pola is port.

Gokanna means 'Ear of a bull' because it looks like the ear of a bull. During World War II, the British took pictures of the place and it looked like the ear of a bull. But we had named it the 'Ear of a bull' thousands of years ago, before the British. How can this be? We must have had flying machines” explained Makalande.

You can have millions of parallel universes next to this universe. Mathematically such a possibility exists. In the play Ravana came from a high tech universe with unbelievable technical advances.

“It was an exhilarating experience. Coordinating the production was very interesting. Practices and rehearsals were sometimes done on the basketball court. People call it epic. And it was because there were 600 students taking part. It was a monumental effort with each student being choreographed. The dedication of the Lyceum staff was exemplary.

It was a sterling effort. It is perfectly true to call the production unique. The students really appreciated it, playing with a 40 member live orchestra. They really did well for this production. The audience couldn’t believe it was a school production” said Makalande.

Special mention must be made of the main choir trainer, Antoinette De Alwis. She is the main trainer of the choir and voice training. The main drama teacher was Odile Melder.

The western dancing teacher was Malsri Dias Weerasinghe. Harsha Makalande composed and directed the play.

It was a collective effort with a lot of skilled drama teachers and a lot of skilled dancing teachers : Eastern and Western. All the inputs were tremendous.
 

	During rehearsals