A good time for Ananda drama
Ananda cast pic by Mangala Weerasekera
When Ananda College won this year’s final of the Interschool Shakespeare Drama competition (organised by the Colombo YMCA and Rotary Club of Colombo North) in the boys’ category, theirs was possibly the quietest end of the Bishops College Auditorium. “We were happy to be chosen,” they say. “What we really wanted was to give the audience a great performance.”
That they did with their 30 minute production of ‘Timon of Athens’, perhaps one of the bard’s lesser known plays for the mainstream audience. Timon is Athens’ most generous man, showering his guests and friends with priceless gifts and valuable tokens whenever they visit. His manservant Flavius fears for him, knowing that Timon’s creditors are closing in, and that his ‘friends’ would drop him like hot coal at the first sign of trouble.
Indeed, when Timon finds himself having to pay off creditors, and sends to his friends for help they refuse him. Enraged, he summons them to his house to express his disappointment and goes away to live in exile. Later he plots a revenge of sorts, but the Ananda College cast chose to end the play with his departure, knowing as they did that it was impossible to squeeze an entire plot into 30 minutes.
Scene from the finals of the Shakespeare Drama competition
The directors were Nishantha de Silva, Ishtartha Wellbodha and Rajitha Hettiarachchi, past students of the school and former Shakes alumni themselves. Over the last three years they’ve watched their alma mater’s drama circle go from strength to strength, winning the 2013 Interschool Drama Competition with their production ‘Alles in Wonderland’ (later staging a public performance, thanks to its popularity), a public production entitled Kensuke’s Kingdom, making it to last year’s Shakes final (although they were placed third, Nandun Dissanayake was awarded Best Supporting Actor) and this year, staging a successful public production ‘Grease Yaka’ under the direction of Ruwanthie De Chickera. “It’s a good time for Ananda drama,” they say. The school hopes to stage a second run of Grease Yaka within the next three months.
The young actors are gearing themselves for a school production of ‘Timon of Athens’, and say that while the plot may have been unfamiliar to them pre-production, they were soon intimately acquainted with the script by the time semi-finals came around. The boys only had three weeks before the semis in which to learn lines, block out their scenes and run through the entire play as a cast. “The directors were planning to do Richard III initially but changed their minds as they wanted to bring in the younger kids,” says Chirantha Kolonne, who played the title role.
Lakshitha Edirisinghe, playing his chief manservant Flavius, was thrust into his role. “I channeled Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained,” he grins-it might have worked, because he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Playing the three fair-weather friends, the Lords Luculus, Lucius and Sempronius were Lithmal Jayawardhana, Vinura Kularatne and Thilina Udayaratne. The trio are great friends offstage and say this helped them rehearse easily for the play. “We would just walk through the Racecourse, saying our lines, and people would give us the funniest looks,” laughs Lithmal. That’s certainly one way to get rid of any latent remnants of stage fear, but then again these three have featured prominently in almost all of Ananda’s major productions over the last two years. “We had different interpretations at the beginning stages,” shares Vinura. “But it just clicked into place for all of us towards the end.”
The school was commended for their strong ensemble, which also consisted of Cast Leader Vinu Wijemmanne, President of the Ananda College Drama Circle Ravin Hettiarachchi, Gavin Ranasinghe, Madura Wijeratne and Vidura Manoratne.