Mitabi Gunawardena’s dining table is awash with colour. Heaped on it are a series of miniature costumes – a grasshopper, a Charleston dancer, an African tribeswoman, a Bharatha natyam dancer. Later this month, each of these delicate little fantasies will be under the spotlight as their young owners don them for a performance at an elite girls’ school. Shaking them out to display the detailed work that distinguishes each, Mitabi says that she just finished a set of 250 for a dance performance and will soon be on to another batch of costumes for a kindergarten just down the road from where she lives. It’s a busy month by anyone’s standards, but for Mitabi, it’s all in a day’s work.
She’s one of the island’s most sought after costume designers – particularly for school productions where it seems she’s dressed every school of note at least once. Her speciality has been the All Island Shakespeare competition. Her costumes are as authentic as she can make them and she often pores over films of the theatrical productions to get the details just right by borrowing a particular shade of maroon or a fullness of a skirt from the professionals. Mitabi has been making costumes through good times and bad, and learnt long ago to make do with a scarcity of materials. However, in recent years, markets have been flooded with all the raw materials she could hope for and a visit to Pettah normally turns up everything she needs to create her masterpiece.
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| Mitabi: Started designing creating costumes for her siblings.
Pix by Lakshman Gunathilake |
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| Designing costumes
for dance productions also part of her busy
schedule |
She’s a familiar figure there, her tall, lithe form easy to pick out of the crowd. “Pettah is like my home,” she tells me, sitting in her living room. Her long acquaintance with the warren of narrow streets and crowded shops in one of Colombo’s oldest districts allows her to zero in on exactly what she needs and be in and out with minimum of fuss. It’s an art that’s taken years to perfect.
I started designing as soon as I left school,” she says, remembering her 16-year-old self. Her grand debut came with the costumes she designed for her brother and his bandmates to wear on stage – simple scarlet cummerbunds and bow ties worn with a classic all black ensemble. “My passion was sewing,” she says, explaining that her parents encouraged her interest by sending her for ‘scientific dressmaking classes.’ She applied her learning with great enthusiasm to creating complete wardrobes for her three sisters, a tradition which she maintained until her marriage in 1964. Still, there was always family in need of her skills. She continued to sew for her children, and when her daughter Surekha joined Usha’s Garten of Ballet as a ballerina in training, she began to make the costumes for her daughter’s classmates as well.
This very naturally snowballed into her taking on entire productions, first for the school and then for other schools and other productions. Surekha herself grew into an accomplished dancer and now stages shows of her own – her mother remains her trusted costume designer. Throughout most of this period, Mitabi’s trusty right hand woman has been an elderly seamstress, Prema. “She’s practically a member of the family,” says Mitabi, explaining that the two have spent many quiet hours sewing together over their 30- year long collaboration. They have their routine so well worked out, that despite the disproportionately large number of last minute orders, they rarely work into the night. While 76-year-old Prema is still sprightly enough to do much of the actual sewing, it’s Mitabi’s hand behind the design. Working primarily for dancers and actors, she’s spent a great deal of time understanding their specific requirements, tailoring her costumes to the movements a dance requires or the nuances of a particular character. At the end of it, she is rewarded by the sight of her costumes on stage. “I make a point of going for the shows,” she says, explaining that even after all these years she’s far from immune to the thrill of seeing her work in the spotlight.
Over the years, she’s been blessed with some enduring relationships – she is frequently approached by children she dressed, many of whom remember her fondly even as adults. Her four children are now well used to this ongoing invasion, though she says they will still make the odd half hearted attempt to claim her undivided attention for Christmas at least. But it’s a busy time, and Mitabi never has the heart to say no to the petitioners that crowd her doorstep. That she’s been able to pull off so many urgent jobs, she credits to the support of her staunchest ally. Her husband of 48 years, Walter, is ever willing to drive her to the shops or wait patiently in the parking lot while she puts a whole class through a fit on. “He even downloads patterns from the internet and gives them to me,” she says. To her, it’s the relationship that has made a lifetime of devotion to her art possible. |
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