Arts

Kala Korner by Dee Cee

Khemadasa's new opera

Khemadasa describes the new opera as a poetic interpretation of the Kanavera Jataka, a story about a village beauty who falls in love with a robber facing the death penalty for treachery against the State. Based on a script by Lucien Bulathsinhala whom he has been closely associated with Khemadasa has used his thinking and creative prowess to design a complete musical score to rekindle the taste buds of music fans. 

Students of the Khemadasa Foundation, which is doing yeoman service in training talented young men and women from the remote outstations, are taking part in the opera. In its first decade the Foundation has successfully built up a fine set of trained voices whom Khemadasa trains untiringly at the backyards of the BMICH. The training is entirely free and it is Khemadasa's determination and commitment that keeps the Foundation going with no State or any other formal assistance. Khemadasa's last opera, 'Manasavila' was highly successful and ran to full houses for several nights. Fans are looking forward to the new opera since the Master rarely disappoints them.

An early start

He was then 13. By 1961 he had started publishing a children's paper titled 'Helabima' until the press that printed it closed down. 

He inherited his father's lucrative furniture business but was more keen to become a publisher. At a time when bookshops were closing down after the government started printing school text books, Jayakody formed the Dayawansa Jayakody Publishing Company and started publishing novels. The first was 'Gini Del' written by P.M.Jayatilleke. With the quick sale of 2000 copies, Jayakody was happy and went into the publishing business in a big way. He records with pride how 13,000 copies of Kumara Karunaratne's novel, 'Sithata Sithak' were sold in just seven days. 

Today almost all popular novelists seek his assistance to get their work published and he acknowledges that his success has been due to them.

The furniture shop was closed down and in its place came up a bookshop. It is a hive of activity with a new book being released every Tuesday.

An avid reader, Jayakody claims he reads a book a day, a habit he started as a student and continues to this day.

Book on Rukmani Devi & a journalist's tales

The book titled, 'Rukmani Devi Yugayaka Swarna Geetaya' (the golden song of an era) is being launched tomorrow, at the Elphinstone Theatre to mark the completion of 55 years of Sinhala cinema. 

The book while being a biography, is also a collection of all songs that Rukmani Devi sang including those which she sang for gramophone records and commercial discs and film songs. 

Ranjit Kumara had taken great pains to collect as many as 300 photographs and include them in the book. The 300 page A4 size book is a Sarasavi publication.

Merril Perera has completed 20 years with the 'Divaina' and has recorded his impressions as a journalist in his latest book, 'Divaine Visi Vasak'. 

The Dayawansa Jayakody publication will be launched on Thursday, at the Public Library auditorium.

Merril's earlier publication, 'Ayubowan Armour Veediya' described his early days as a journalist at Lake House.

Fresh triumph for Butterflies

By Chris Tribble

times we live in - these swinging times when the disastrous business of war brings death and disfigurement to civilians and soldiers, and huge profits to a few.

The opening of the play presents us with our first contradiction. The narrator, beautifully played by Rajiv Perera, can neither speak nor hear, yet his silent eloquence is unambiguous and he takes us on a tour through a nightmare land where the innocent have no defence, and the winners take all. 

The contradictions continue as soldiers become the victims of war rather than its perpetrators, and ordinary citizens become (quite literally) components in the machinery of war. The visual effect of battle engines made up of human beings in wheelchairs and on crutches, offers one of the most memorable moments in the first half of the production.

As the play unfolds we are faced with another contradiction, for despite the strong Sri Lankan tradition of masked performance, the masks Julian Crouch and the cast have made for this production are like nothing you will have seen on a Sri Lankan stage. Simultaneously threatening and poignant, the masks allow the cast to become equal protagonists in a drama in which their capacity to intimidate or evince pity is completely independent of whether or not they depend on a wheel chair for mobility, whether they have two legs or none. 

Difference in ability is dissolved by the power of the masks the characters put on and the whole company emerges as consummate actors. Dramatic skill, engagement in the play and commitment to the ensemble become the criteria against which we judge their performance and what we have called "disability" becomes a meaningless distinction. This is one of the great achievements of this production (and a total vindication of the work of the Sunera Foundation and the support it has received from the Department of International Development and the British Council).

Using gesture, dance and voice, the Butterflies Theatre Group brings home the full horror of modern conflict in which impersonal weapons kill and maim while an elite group and its goons reap the profit. 

The image of a bride and groom dancing before a background of threatening masked figures (I have seen nothing closer to Goya's Disasters of War than this juxtaposition of innocence and nightmare) will remain with all those who were lucky enough to be at Bishops' College Auditorium for the two performances in December. 

We gave a standing ovation to the cast and the producers. I hope that a broader audience in Sri Lanka and overseas will have the opportunity to share our experience.

Dream role for Indian actress

By Anupa Prathap Mathew

Preeya Kalidas, a Gujarati brought up in south west London with no prior experience on the West End, has been selected by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his next musical Bombay Dreams. It is scheduled to be staged in June this year.

According to a report in a London-based news daily, the actress was said to be "ecstatic" about winning her first A-list role. She had auditioned a few years ago for a small role in the musical Miss Saigon but was rejected.

Kalidas's selection was the culmination of a six-month search for stars by Webber, who picked the actress after four auditions. "The music is amazing and the songs are completely heart-wrenching", was how she described Bombay Dreams.

The plot of the musical, which sounds very much like a Bollywood film, is set in the Indian city of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. It has Kalidas playing the daughter of a wealthy Indian film producer who falls in love with a poor slum dweller - Dirty Dancing meets Khiladi 420.

Webber has created the music and dance extravaganza in co-operation with Shekhar Kapur, the Indian director of films such as Bandit Queen and Oscar-nominated Elizabeth. He usually writes his own music, but has A.R. Rahaman, one of India's most successful composers, working on the new stage production.

Webber, the composer of legendary hits such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Evita, described Rahman's work as being "far ahead of the game". He said "We could be talking about the future of musicals for a very long time".

Meera Syal of Goodness Gracious Me fame has written the script, with lyrics by Don Black, Webber's long-time associate.

Born in Britain, Kalidas from a very young age was determined to be an actress. She spent five years at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone, London, where fellow students included the Spice Girl Emma Bunton and Natalie and Nicole Appleton of the All Saints pop group.

In the past one year, Kalidas has worked in a series of minor theatre shows and television advertisements. 

She has also landed parts in two feature films, Bollywood Queen, a romantic flick set in London, and Bend It like Beckham, about a football-crazy Asian girl in Britain. 

- Courtesy Gulf News

Sounds from Germany

In response to the demands of literature from 17th to 20th century and music of our times, the Ensemble Resonanz has developed multiple profiles. 

On the one hand, it is a classical chamber orchestra, on the other hand, the musicians play in variable soloist formations or in the fashion of chamber music. 

The Ensemble Resonanz has established itself as one of the leading Chamber Music Groups in Germany with a variety of projects full of diversity and contrast. 

Honouring two memorable stars

It was a touching moment for Iranganie. The audience kept on applauding until she, collected her award from Milina Sumathipala, widow of the founder, and returned to her seat. In between popular actor Kamal Addaraarchchi intercepted her to have a few words with her. "What is the satisfaction you get from acting?" he asked her. She responded by quoting just one instance. "Three brothers were quarrelling over some land. They had gone into litigation. They hated one another. Having seen 'Doo Daruwo' ( the popular teledrama where she played the key role) they had felt ashamed and made peace." 

If you are offered a diplomatic posing as against acting, what will you choose?" Kamal asked. 

Her reply was hardly audible - obviously she said "acting."

Having seen her in English plays during her University days in the early fifties, Lester James Peries had picked her for an early documentary he did for the Traffic Police. And then she got her big break in Lester's first feature film, 'Rekava', a landmark in Sinhala cinema. Thereafter she appeared regularly in his films including 'Sandesya', Delovak Athara' and 'Ran Salu'. She continued to act in dramas and is best remembered for her role in Henry Jayasena's 'Apata Puthe Magak Nethe'. 

On to television, she won the hearts of everyone as Sudu Hamine in Niriella's 'Yashorawaya', and then moved over to long serials by Nalan Mendis' 'Doo Daruwo', 'Nedeyo' and the currently running 'Sathpura Vesiyo'.

The other recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award this year was popular star Malini Fonseka who has dominated Sri Lanka's film scene for nearly four decades. We watched her at Lumbini Theatre in late 1965 when she began her career on stage with an award winning performance in 'Akal Wessa'. Dharmadasa Jayaweera's drama was one of four plays selected for the State Drama Festival that year. Just four players acted in 'Akal Wessa'. Malini played the lead role and bagged the Best Actress award - a big achievement for a novice. She has not looked back since then. If I remember right, then she was either a student at Gurukula Vidyalaya, Kelaniya or was just out of school.

She broke into the silver screen in 1968 with Tissa Liyanasuriya's 'Punchi Baba'. 

Her big break in cinema came in Dharmasena Pathiraja's 'Eya Den Loku Lamayek', gaining recognition at the Moscow Film Festival in 1975. Since then she has dominated the Sinhala screen. She has acted in well over 125 films. The tally at the end of 1998 was 127.

The local awards that Malini has won are far too many to list here. Starting with 'Nidhanaya', Lester James Peries' classic voted the best in the first fifty years of Sinhala cinema, when she won the Critics Award (1972), Malini has won Presidential Awards for Best Actress 

Malini moved over to the small screen not so long ago and has made her mark in some truly memorable performances. 

Her portrayal of Ema Nona, the courageous woman in Tissa Abeysekera's 'Pitagamkarayo' - a story spanning three generations will be long remembered. She won the Sumathi Award for that performance. She was adjudged Best Actress this year too - for her role in 'Kemmura' for which husband Lucky Dias grabbed the award for Best Teledrama as its producer.

- D C Ranatunga