‘Theatre is still a place to share powerful messages
View(s):Celebrating the 10 year anniversary of ‘Bakamuna Weedi Basi’, a political satire Rajitha Dissanayake Theatre festival will start on August 1.
The three plays produced by Rajitha include, ‘Sihina Horu Aran’, ‘Adara Wasthuwa’ and ‘Bakamuna Veedi Basi’ have won critical acclaims while they are highly enjoyed by the audience.
Speaking about the reasons to conduct the festival Rajitha said there were two, one is that ‘Sihinia Horu Aran’ celebrates tenth anniversary while ‘Adara Wasthuwa’ celebrates its first anniversary on August 2. “To have a play alive for ten years is a great achievement for me as a director and my team. We have done more than 100 shows and the play was staged at Bharath Ranga Mahothswa in India and five European countries,” Rajitha said.
Asked about the suitability of the play ‘Sihina Horu Aran’ to the society after ten years, Rajitha said that the play is more suitable for today’s society than ten years ago and at several university students response have been proved this. “Though this play reveals certain realities of life it also uncovers certain truth about the society and specially on the issue of power. So the issue of power is more important today,”
However Rajitha stresses that the play must maintain its basic and should entertain the audience. “A play has to be an entertaining experience and whatever the underlying message we give it has to be given in an entertaining manner”Asked as to why the stage is not as politically powerful as in the 1980s “We have to be conscious about the limitation imposed on us. We have to be aware about the present society and its limitation.
“In today’s society thinking has stopped at a dangerous point among the general public. Thinking has been controlled in a totalitarian level. We have to make people think twice about this. However we can still show this in the theatre,” the award winning director said. However Dissanayake views that the habit of enjoying art has lost from this generation and people used to too much addicted to market economic system.
“Enjoying art is an experience that cannot be compared with anything else,” he said and added that at present biggest challenge is to take the inherit the habit to enjoy art among the people.Rajitha plans to start his newest play after August festival and it is scheduled to be staged in next January.
‘Sihina Horu Aran’, ‘Adara Wasthuwa’ and ‘Bakamuna Veedi Basi’ will be staged at 7 pm on August 1 to 3 respectively at Lionel Wendt theatre, Colombo. Tickets priced at Rs 1000, 750, 500 and 300 (Balcony) is available at the Wendt.