Events
View(s):Amarillo all set for tonight’s show
The Amarillo School of Music is ready for its first concert seven years after it was started. ‘The Way to Amarillo’ will see more than 90 of the school’s 200 students presenting vocal and instrumental talents. The concert will be held tonight, 18 at
7 p.m. at the Sri Sambuddhathva Jayanthi Auditorium, 32, Havelock Road, Colombo 5.
Amarillo School of Music has a dedicated staff of 12 who train the students in playing instruments including drums, clarinet, saxophone, flute, guitar and singing as well. The school conducts individual classes.
“We started seven years ago with only 10 students. It’s a deviation from my usual art form which is dancing. Dancing and music goes together and since I already have a dancing school I thought of starting a music school. The show will be upto professional standards and I invite everyone to come and experience a night of music and singing,” says the founder and director of the school, veteran dancer Dharshan Wijesooriya.
Tickets priced at Rs. 500, 750 and 1000 are available at the school premises at 378/3, Araliya Gardens, Nawala, Rajagiriya and its branch in Maharagama. Tickets will also be available at the gate.
-T.M.
Workshop for women
A workshop for women was held at Maswatta, Borella, organised by the Dematagoda UNP organiser under the guidance of Borella Chief Organiser, former Western Province Councillor Jayantha de Silva. The picture shows Mr. Silva presenting a certificate of participation to one of the women. Also in the picture are members of the Municipal Council.
Awards ceremony of the Diploma in Forensic Medicine and Science course
The awards ceremony of the Diploma in Forensic Medicine and Science course will be held at 9.30 a.m. on May 24 at the Colombo Faculty of Medicine, Kynsey Road, Colombo 8.
The inauguration of the course for 2014 will also be held on the same day. The course is open to practising lawyers and those who have a first degree in Law. Justice Eva Wanasundera will be the Chief Guest at the ceremony.
RWA celebrates 46th anniversary with Avurudu Ulela
The Ratmalana Welfare Association (RWA) held an Avurudu Ulela as part of its 46th anniversary celebrations. It was followed by a successful family get-together and the Annual General Meeting of the association.
Judging the kiribath presentation- Mrs. V. Senadheera, Mrs. Lilian Kariyavasam and Dr. Lilangani de Silva
The Dehiwela Mount Lavinia Mayor was the Chief Guest and the Deputy Mayor, Base Commander Ratmalana Air Force Base and the Senior Superintendent of the Mount Lavinia Division were Guests of Honour.
The Mayor in his address mentioned that although he annually attends many RWA events, the Association doesn’t trouble him with requests for help. He said, he would make some form of a gesture in this regard due to the good work being done towards community development.
President of the RWA, Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Ravi Arunthavanathan welcomed all the invitees and also the members and their families who had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare the children for various events.
He thanked his executive committee and the organizing committee of the event and said he wishes to see more people rallying towards the worthy causes espoused by the RWA towards the upliftment of community life.
Dehiwela Mount Lavinia Mayor Dhanasiri Amaratunga, Deputy Mayor Keseralal Gunasekera and Ratmalana Welfare Association President Air Vice Marshal ( Retd) Ravi Arunthavanathan with the children taking part in the Avurudu celebrations
“Ata”, “Mall Star” and “Like”: Undergraduate art is alive!
By Namali Premawardhana
When at 6.33 p.m., only three minutes late, the lights went down at the E. O. E. Pereira Theatre at the University of Peradeniya, the mostly-undergraduate audience began applauding in eager expectation of a well put-together production. One minute, two minutes of waiting, and nothing happened. Three or four minutes, the audience starts buzzing, laughing, switching their phones on for light and catcalling. Dark silhouettes are hurrying across the stage in a general confusion.
A scene from one of the plays. Pic by Praveen Ekanayake
Then from the back of the hall, comes the voice of a hardened woman, cursing loudly in Sinhala.
The playing had begun.
On Saturday, May 10, a University of Peradeniya-based theatre group brought to life the “Parallel Stage”, a collection of three collaboratively written plays. “Ata”, “Mall Star” and “Like” laid down the concerns of the youthful intelligentsia in a refreshingly carefree but well conceived production.
The production worked in glimpses of typical and theoretical relationships. A young graduate, privileged girl, cleaning lady and bureaucrat, are brought together by a seed distribution project in “Ata”. A security guard, broke undergraduate, and enthusiastic shopper are trapped inside a shopping mall. They struggle to get out and then give up, only to find later that they are the new stars of the “Mall Star” reality series. The third play, “Like”, involves a larger cast of undergraduates from different backgrounds, all located spatially in David Uncle’s canteen and virtually on his fake Facebook account.
No real plots, no developments. It was “art for arts’ sake”, one of the players said.
And the plays were definitely cleverly crafted, with a relish for the devices, apart from any meaningfulness. But there was a screaming inter-textuality to the scripts, which inevitably created links, motifs and undercurrents of a typically undergraduate resentment.
So it may not really have been art for art’s sake, though there was an unintentionality to the message. And possibly because of that very unintentionality (and maybe even the inevitability of it), one was able to leave the theatre at the end, and forget it all, taking just the good feeling of having had an “evening out”.
And then that effect of the theatre “bubble” and the “feel good factor” of a consumerist, entertainment-therapy driven culture was the very phenomenon under scrutiny in the grander scheme of things. While “Ata”, was slightly angrier at this so-called problem than the other two plays, “Like” and especially “Mall Star” theatrically drove home the point that it could not and would not be fought.
While the plays seemed to have been beautifully conceived, and the acting, directing, sounds and lighting all structured to complement this conception, the execution wasn’t always spot on. Especially in “Like”, the exchange of lines lacked the slick execution required of a script spread across three different conversations taking place simultaneously on one stage. “Like” also experimented with a projector screen and live feeds of David Uncle’s Facebook page which though it was probably meant to create an interesting subtext, also distracted from the dialogue. But then again, when did Facebook ever do anything other than distract one? “Mall Star” seemed the best developed, technically as well as conceptually.
The stage was a hodgepodge of minimalist and realist props that spoke of a fresh, amateur unintentionality. The point – if there was one – seems made. While the glitches of an amateur stage were evident in places, the whole was a refreshing reminder of how rich Sri Lankan theatre really is.
As happens once every few years, a collection of young people, either artistically inclined intellectuals or intellectually inclined artists (or a collection of both – one can’t ever tell), came together at the E. O. E. Pereira Theatre to shine some hopeful light for the undergraduate generation. One only wishes it happened more often than that!