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Arts Adding
dynamism to words and movements Currently in
Sri Lanka as moderator for examinations for Trinity College, the
oldest exam board in the world, Mr. Cheeseman, Associate Chief Examiner
in Drama and Speech Subjects also conducted workshops for teachers
of private and government institutions. These workshops being conducted
in other countries too, is part of a programme to commemorate 125
years of the Trinity College London. The two-day
workshop comprised practical sessions in speech, drama and effective
communication. During the drama session Mr. Cheeseman demonstrated
new ideas, techniques, and processes, using games and exercises,
which were applied to acting. He further underlined the principles
of what is good practice in drama and in spoken communication. "Good
practice is not showing off how good I am. Good practice leads to
good communication. It is a sharing of thoughts, ideas, attitudes
and feelings." Speech and
Drama teachers from different schools around Sri Lanka were invited
to the sessions that were full of fun and laughter. Practical exercises
on character work, working out scenes for which only movements were
indicated, etc., involving all the participants proved to be effective
and enjoyable. Participants
were also asked to reflect on who they were as characters and the
potential within each of them to portray a range of characteristics
based on circumstances. In addition they were given a list of web
sites that give access to information and free downloading of stories,
plays and poems. An interesting
aspect experimented with during the Drama session was 'Hot seating'
- where an actor was questioned about a character in a particular
script. "The more involved you are in a character, the more
you will know. Playwrights only give you so much information and
you are left to supply the rest. Inventing is an important part
of playing a character," said Mr. Cheeseman. After training
at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Bob Cheeseman worked
as a voice and speech specialist at the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art before returning to the Central School as voice tutor. He had
a brief spell as an actor but the bulk of his work focussed on four
main fronts: the education of drama students, direction for theatre
and television, speech training for teachers and priests, examining
in drama, theatre and spoken English. He has also
taught in several distinguished institutions and directed a number
of productions such as 'Godspell' for national tours and West End
theatres. For a brief period he worked as assistant director for
BBC and Granada TV and has directed Romeo and Juliet and Othello
in Palm Beach, Florida. He had been
involved in examining Speech and Drama for many years for the University
of London, been Chief Examiner for Advanced level GCE Theatre Studies
before becoming full-time Chief Examiner in Drama and Speech for
Trinity College London. When asked
how he rates students in Sri Lanka, Mr. Cheeseman remarked that
they were well prepared and worked meticulously on the text. However,
he would encourage them to be a little braver in improvisation,
risk making mistakes, use their own personal creativity and perhaps
some of their own culture. Institutions
represented were Lyceum, Wendy Whatmore, Alethea, Gateway, and Varuni
Jayasuriya's school. Among the participants
was Nafisa Usafally who found the workshop a good learning experience
as they went into a lot of practical aspects of drama. Sushara Liyanage
of Wendy Whatmore would have liked more time for group activities
and role-play. The workshop however covered all expected areas giving
new insights into the inner workings of a character that would enable
them to provide a different perspective for their students, she
said. Mr. Cheeseman
also visited Jaffna where students where exams had been held before
1983. This visit was scheduled for sessions with senior pupils and
teachers of schools, both private and government with the hope of
reintroducing speech and drama exams again in the north and east. Organised by Ramola Sivasundaram, Executive Director of The Polytechnic Limited and Representative for Trinity College, London in Sri Lanka, the workshop had packed sessions of over 50 each time. Extra sessions were also arranged for teachers to meet Mr. Cheeseman, to clear doubts and identify areas to work on. Preshanthi
to perform with the EU Chamber Orchestra Concerts are
scheduled to take place in Colombo on November 15 and 16 while the
Kandy concert is to be held on November 17. There is a
Sri Lankan component in this year's programme as talented Sri Lankan
born singer Preshanthi Navaratnam will sing three arias by Handel.
Preshanthi
is no stranger to lovers of classical music in this country. "The beauty
of Preshi's performances lies in her dramatic delivery since it's
not only music that she is proficient in but also drama. It will
be a treat to have her performing for us," said music critic
Dr. Mrs. Selvie Perera. She has sung the solos in Poulec's "Gloria"
conducted by Adrian Brown and Haydn's "Creation" conducted
by Gerry Cornelius The guest director
of the tour is to be Knut Zimmerman, leader of the second violins
in the Berlin Staatakapelle and leader of the German Chamber Orchestra. "The European
Union Chamber Orchestra was established 20 years ago and its present
composition speaks for its mixture of countries belonging to the
Union," says Wouter Wilton, the Charge D'Affaires of the Delegation
of the European Commission to Sri Lanka. The Orchestra includes
German, British, Swedish, Belgian and Finnish musicians. "The
orchestra will give listeners a taste of a mixture of music. The
cultures of the individual countries are present in Sri Lanka,"
he said. Since its first
concerts in 1981 the EUCO has gained worldwide reputation as a musical
ambassador for the European Union. Regular tours take it worldwide
and performances have included those before Queen Noor of Jordan,
the King and Queen of Belgium and its own patron, Queen Sofia of
Spain. The works of
Bach, Handel, Dvorak, Vivaldi, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky are to
be performed at the concerts. This year's
tour to Sri Lanka has been made possible by the generous contribution
of Prestige Automobiles (Pvt.) Ltd. Other sponsors include The Lanka
Oberoi, Jetwing Travels, The Sunday Times, TNL Radio and Dynavision.
Retrospective
exhibition on the net The Serendib
Gallery, which launched the Art Sri Lanka web site, featuring Sri
Lankan art and culture in March this year, has also arranged for
a commemorative lecture and an exhibition of the works of LT.P.
Manjusri to be held shortly. Manjusri was
an aimless village lad, who subsequently by single-minded tenacity
of purpose, and sheer hard work in his chosen career, achieved the
rare distinction of being one of the most significant painters of
modern Sri Lanka. His crowning glory was the the Ramon Magsaysay
Award, 1979, in recognition of his contribution to literature and
creative communication arts. The University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters in March 1981. Manjusri was
born on October 28, 1902 at Aluthgama. He was so fascinated by the
sight of monks begging for alms, that at the age of 13 he joined
the Sangha as an acolyte. In 1922 he was ordained a Bhikku; the
next ten years were devoted to the pursuit of Pali and Buddhist
studies. Manjusri went
to Santiniketan in 1932 to study Chinese. During his stay in Santiniketan
he came under the influence of Nandalal Bose and his interest turned
to art. In 1937 he returned to Sri Lanka and stayed at Gotami Vihare,
Borella, visiting Buddhist temples throughout the country, making
copies of paintings of the Kandyan School. Manjusri made
an outstanding contribution to the preservation of these precious
national treasures by generating a national awareness of their importance
in artistic as well as historical terms. Manjusri was
one of the founder members of the '43 Group. Inspired by Surrealism
and Cubism Manjusri developed a pictorial vocabulary in which he
created visual equivalents for the fantasies of the subconscious
mind Booker
Prize The Montreal
novelist was the clear favourite to win the prestigious prize after
the organizers mistakenly named him as the successful author while
doing a test run on their official website last week. A jubilant
Martel - who edged out the five other finalists from Canada, Australia,
Ireland and Wales in contention for the 50,000 pound (US$77,500)
literary award - punched the air in delight when his name was read
out at a ceremony at the British Museum in central London. Martel
thanked the judges "for deciding that of the six fine books
on the shortlist, mine was the luckiest." His novel tells
the story of Pi - short for Piscine - a boy brought up on a zoo
in India. Pi's father decides to move the family to live in Canada
and sell the animals to the great zoos of America. The ship taking
them across the Pacific sinks and 16-year-old Pi finds himself the
sole human survivor on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orang-utan, a
zebra with a broken leg and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker.
"I would like to thank readers for having met my imagination
halfway," the Spanish-born Martel, 39, said. Martel said he
believed his early naming on the website was a "good omen".
Organizers insisted similar pages had been prepared for all of the
shortlisted authors but the mistake led to a flurry of bets on the
Canadian and British bookmakers suspended all betting. Lisa Jardine,
the chairwoman of the five-member voting panel, said the judges
had "vigorous intellectual agreements but no fights" during
their deliberations. "What we looked for was simply quality
and we looked for books that readers, like us, would delight in
reading." The Booker
Prize is bestowed annually on the best English-language novel by
a writer from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth of former British
colonies. Canadians dominated the shortlist for this year's award
- Martel was joined by Rohinton Mistry for "Family Matters"
and Carol Shields for "Unless". But they faced strong
competition from "Dirt Music" by Australia's Tim Winton,
"The Story of Lucy Gault" by Ireland's William Trevor
and "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters of Wales. Previous winner Ben Okri said he was pleasantly surprised by the 2002 finalists. "I thought it was surprising. I think on the whole you find that the literary establishment has its mentality of favourites and the judges completely exploded that. They chose people that weren't expected," said Okri, who won the prize in 1991. "Life of Pi" is Martel's third book and has already won the author the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Born in Spain to diplomat parents, Martel's own background is dominated by travel - he grew up in Alaska, Canada, Costa Rica, France and Mexico, before settling in Montreal. Kala Korner by Dee Cee Meaningful Sinhala
technical terms at last Aelian is a
Chartered Engineer. He is more a lover of the Sinhala language and
a great admirer of indigenous talent and craftsmanship. I first
came to know him when he compiled a glossary of technical terms
in Sinhala in the mid-1950s while serving as an Engineer in the
Department of Electrical Undertakings (forerunner to the CEB). He
spent a great deal of time in coining meaningful Sinhala terms when
he realised that what the Official Languages Department was turning
out, were mere copies of Sanskrit terms which did not convey the
actual meaning. We, on the 'Dinamina' at the time, fully supported
Aelian's effort but he did not get the backing of the Official Language
Commissioner and his staff. "Sanskrit
was never used for practical technological processes. Even so, the
Sanskrit-phobia reached surprising levels when even the existing
Sinhala terms, while simple and accurate, were excommunicated to
make room for weird Sanskrit monstrosities," Aelian recalls. After years
of hard work, Aelian has compiled a comprehensive list of technical
terms in Sinhala, which he has titled 'Sinhalayen Sipyuru Vadan'.
He explains that it provides all linguistic information necessary
to produce the desired technological literature in Sinhala, thus
enhancing the technological abilities of a people who are naturally
technologically inclined. A long felt
need Erudite scholar
Arisen Ahubudu lauded Aelian's undaunting task and reminded the
audience how the author was encouraged by the language a remote
villager in Tantirimale used when asked for the way to the famed
Buddha statue during a school trip. Acknowledging Aelian's talent,
he said: "We have yet to come across a person who is equally
well versed in Sinhala, English and technical knowledge." In
a hard-hitting speech, Aelian was most critical of those who don't
appreciate or recognise indigenous talent. "We grab everything
that come from abroad with both hands but totally ignore the best
products that are turned out here. Our people are remarkable. They
are so talented. Yet they don't gain any recognition." |
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Ltd. All rights reserved. |
