Theatrical thrill ride

Amalshan GUNRATHNE

The burning appetite of local theatre lovers will be treated with a mouth-watering artistic thrill ride with the unravelling of the inaugural Colombo International Theatre Festival this week.

The festival will provide theatre-buffs with an exclusive opportunity to witness productions from six foreign countries. The productions from Germany, Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and India will be shown during the festival.

Staring from March 26, the festival will go on till April 2nd. While providing a refreshingly different experience to the theatre-lovers, the festival hopes to acclimatize them with new contemporary trends of the World Theatre. The dramas will be shown at British School Theatre during evening.

The festival is organized by M Safeer and his vibrant youth from ‘Interact Art Society’. Though small in number, Safeer and his co have put in a tremendous effort to turn the event in to reality. Safeer believes that the theatre festival will act as a catalyst to raise an awareness regarding the contemporary trends in modern theatre. His dream is to somehow turn Colombo Theatre Festival in to an extravaganza that is as grand as Colombo Book Fair or Galle Literary Festival. Sharing his message with the media, Safeer noted, “To have an international theatre festival in my country was a dream that I had as a dramatist. The dream is about to come true after lots of sacrifices. We are a small group and we had to do lots of sacrifices to turn this dream in to a reality. But this is only the beginning. This is just a part of that ultimate grand dream. We are going to initiate this project this year and hope that it will evolve into something grand as the years go on.”

Adding great value to the event, Honorary President of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People, ‘Wolfgang Schneider’ is expected to visit the country in parallel to the event. Sharing his message with local theatre lovers, he noted, “The act of watching theatre is itself an art, which must be learned. Listening must be practised in order to begin to understand.. Onstage, stories may be told, but their images and meanings can arise only when an audience is there to perceive them. This is a mystery! For this reason, theatre is not simply a world heritage; it ought to be recognised as the ninth wonder of the world.”

The festival is also expected to bridge the gap between foreign theatre and local theatre. The youth from Interact Art firmly believes that dramatist should look to experiment with contemporary styles rather than sticking with same worn-out, stale, dramatic formats. They believe that dialogue based theatre culture restricts the dramatist's mode of expression. They feel that obsolete theatre culture we have does not allow the dramatist's full creative prowess to flourish. However, away from such stale theatrical concepts, the festival will introduce new, contemporary theatre styles to Sri Lankan audience. Speaking to media, a member of Interact Art, Hasindu Randil Abeywickrama noted, “We have lot to learn from them.

Their ways of doing drama is new to us. Unlike us they don't always give prominence to dialogues. The festival will act as a bridge that will connect us altogether.”

German Dance Act production director Gustavo Fijalkow, Thivanka Ranasinghe and S Dayalan. Picture by Sulochana Gamage

The festival will kick off with the German Production ‘ChangeABLE Cohesion’. The production is created by the German Choreographer Gerda Konig. The production brings both professional and disabled dancers together for a poetically theatrical composition. The dancers who are participating for the show are all Sri Lankan and German team have been working with Sri Lankan crew for the past three months.

The second day will feature the Iranian production, ‘Old Man and the Sea’. The Indonesian, Indian, Australian and Pakistan productions will be showcased during following days. In parallel to the festival, the veterans of the Sri Lankan theatre field will be awarded with special honorary awards as a tribute to their services in drama field. Prominent figures in local drama, Namel Weeramuni, Somalatha Subasinghe, Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka, Professor Tissa Kariyavasam, Professor S. Monaguru and Dr Sunil Wijeysiriwardana will be awarded with honorary awards during the festival.

Apart from dramas, an interesting set of workshops will be conducted to educate the youth. The workshop will introduce certain theatrical trends which might be still alien to Sri Lankan theatre lovers.

These include discussions on, ‘Mix Ability Theatre, Object Theatre and Story-telling Theatre. Other than that, the workshops will also discuss about the technology in theatre in coming years, how it will influence the process of theatre making, etc.. The workshops will be conducted by both foreign and local artists. The workshops will take place on Goethe Institut Colombo.

ANCL is the print media sponsor of the event.

Some of the performances that can be expected at the event

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