Sharing the ageless truth of an ancient tale
View(s):“Daniel”, a new play by a new playwright, Angelo Pereira which goes on the boards at the Lionel Wendt on April 4, 5 and 6 is based on the famous Biblical story and writings from thousands of years ago. But in preparing for the stage, the young cast is rediscovering the age-old truth of the agelessness of faith.
“Daniel”, is the first major production of 29-year-old Angelo Pereira’s plays. He wrote and produced “Star of Wonder” in December 2011 with the help of his friend Dominic Kellar of Pusswedilla fame and an amateur cast of school-leavers and buoyed by its success, Pereira this time has veteran director Jerome de Silva on board, bringing this new script to life.
Young cast eager to share the story of Daniel. Pic by Nilan Maligaspe
The original plot is taken from the Biblical account of four young Israelite men who are taken captive to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar’s men. Daniel leads Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego as they engage in a battle of faith, to remain true to the values of their original culture in the face of imperial threat.
What attracted Pereira to the idea of writing a play based on this account was Dhanan Senathirajah’s book “Daniel out of His Comfort Zone”. The research-based publication attempts to place the Biblical story in its historical and psychological context. This context, Pereira feels, makes the story relevant to contemporary culture, where one is constantly caught in the battle between one’s beliefs and the need to survive and succeed.
This relevance is testified in the way the young cast is drawn into the energy and urgency of the play. There seems to be so much of who they are as twenty-somethings in 2014 Sri Lanka, in the four captive young Jews. Who would have imagined that Daniel, also known as Belteshazzar, third most powerful man in Babylon, shook “like a leaf” when Nebuchadnezzar’s men came for him? Who would have guessed at the frailty of his young mind that swung from terrified convulsions to bold and righteous proclamations and back in a span of minutes?
And who believes that the help which transformed him from fearful youth to powerful leader is available to us all, today?“It’s sometimes difficult, because [Daniel] is changing from a child into an old man, and I have to change with him,” says Hisham Jameel who plays Daniel. Amaz Irshad, 21, is one of his closest friends, Shadrach. “Religion is priority for me,” he says, “and although they are Jews, it’s pretty much like real life”.
The heart of the play is about staying true to who you are and what you believe in, something the whole cast recognizes as a hard thing to do in “real life”. The story is meant to demonstrate that if you fight the good fight with faith, you have more than your own strength to hold you up.“It gets the word out,” says Liza de Jong, “that’s why most of us are here”.
De Jong plays Rabuti, the flirtatious daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, whose bright robes are meant to distract and captivate. Niren Ranasinghe, playing her father the Babylonian King, is stretching himself to embody the “sparkling, magical” flamboyance of his kingdom while still “getting what [he] can” out of the deep truths of the play.
Ranasinghe (Caliban’s Rebellion) and Dulika Jayamanne (And Then There Were None) are among the more experienced and better known faces from the cast of “Daniel”. The rest are admittedly very young and mostly amateur, but what brings them together to do what they do is much more than just a love of the stage and lights. It is the conviction that “Daniel” should be seen and heard, that there is an ageless truth in the ancient tale, which is worth sharing.
“Daniel”, written and produced by Angelo Pereira, directed by Jerome de Silva, hits the Lionel Wendt stage from April 4 – 6.