Thidora - Sri Lanka

Andorra Max Frisch’s “Andorra” came pat last year.

It was translated into Sinhala by Lakshman Fernando, who played a role in Ashley Halpe’s English play in the 60s’ it is produced by Rohana Deva Perera. When shown recently “Andorra” was thrown up as a play relieving the Traumas of ethnic prejudice and hate. Such a theme cannot lose its relevance any day, yet why I make special bones of it is because I feel now such plays need some re-looking into. This is true of all serious plays waiting in the wings today.
In “Andorra” the theme of the hunter and the hunted; of parochial fears feeding on wide-spread prejudice; of helpless innocence trapped in evil not of its own making, become sharper and more nerve-wrenchingly prominent, while the theme of ethnic prejudice and hate assumes a more subdued potency.
In any case with such a interesting venture on his hand Rohana Perera will have to exercise a tighter rein on his production resources to even out the quality of the Sinhala “Andorra” [RUHIRU]. For any producer to establish a unified rhythm out of the uneasy Frischian structure, jugged up with a series of confessions and comments from the dock, is a formidable task.
The other reason why I picked “Andorra” for comment is the choice of actor for the tragic hero and the highly arguable interpretation of the role. This young actor- a workshop product [Mohamed Safraz] plays a passive sufferer in “Andorra” and plays it well.

By Gamini Haththotuwegama - ‘The Island’-06-09-1989.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle
It was a novel experience to local theatre goers who had not seen street drama enacted on stage. - R.S. Karunaratne.

Rohana Deva Perera, a young dramatist has produced “Hunuwataye Natakaya” [The Caucasian Chalk Cercal]. He produced it as a street drama in 1990. He thought he could give effect to Brecht’s Alienation Theory by producing the Hunuwataye Natakaya in a novel way. For that matter Brecht wanted the spectators’ intellect to be free and mobile and to be alienated from the stage action. He did not want the audience to be influenced by socially conditioned phenomena. Empathy with the audience was not expected and Brecht’s alienation effect was used to remove the stamp of familiarity from anything on the stage. In simpler terms, Brecht wanted the audiences to view his plays objectively, with their minds detached and alert.
Following Brecht’s theory, Rohana says, he reduced the props to a minimum and got his actors to perform with controlled gestures avoiding emphasis and crescendo. He introduced songs and speeches when action on stage came to a halt. Rohana has tried to present the audience that he could enact the play with a lesser number of players than in a conventional drama. For instance, Rohana does two roles, that of the narrator and Azdak. In this every things happen on the stage: change of costumes, change of roles and various other devices. In a way it was a novel experience to local theatre goers who had not seen street dramas enacted on stage.
The performance of Rohana Deva Perera as the narrator and Azdak, Ramani Damayanthi as Grusha and Prem Jayantha Kapuge as Simon Shashawa was commendable.

By: R.S.Karunaratne. “THE OBSERVER” - September28, 1992

“Rosa Kale” [The Garden of Roses]
Produced by the Natya Silpa Shalika in 1994.

Inmates of a Home for disables are at play. They sing the customary song while at play, thus-
“From where are these children?
Picked up at Rose Garden!! “
Children question the Group Leader whether they have been picked up from the pleasant Rose Garden? She has no reply. Then the Teacher joins these innocent children in the game. Together they make a cattle-shed. They shiver in severe coldness and make a fire place to make them warmth and gather around it all night. On their search for God they see infant Jesus. In devotion they worship Lord Jesus.
Santa Clause comes along singing and dancing with presents. Everyone surrounds him and dances. Alas! He leaves everybody and goes away.

X’mas is over!
Where’s Jesus?

Please do come to grace our poor Garden of Roses-Oh! Lord Jesus …

Procession Comes, Comes and Goes!!!
Produced by the Natya Silpa Shalika in 1994.

A letter is received by Children’s Home from a Colombo Gentlemen. It states that this time too, a grand festival is organized. They are happy about it. It also states that presents are distributed. If so they say food parcels will be given as on previous occasions. With difficulty they get ready hurriedly to join the procession. Over the children Organizers very proudly gain prominence in the processes, so, that’s all!
Next year too, the Procession will be conducted. Those going back should get ready for it. Should they?

“Pol Saha Thal”
[Coconut & Palm]

Produced by the Natya Silpa Shalika in 1994.
Mothers lead a simple life, lulling their babies. They only preach to their children of their clan with pride whilst incorrectly instilling ideals of opportunism about other clans and engross in building up rival camps. The result of the struggle is that disables from both camps emerge into society. So should this continue If we get-together we can rid our differences and doubts. Those who are clamoring to give us as bates will ultimately remain isolated.

“Kekiri” -Directed by Perter Wellambage and Rohana Deva.

It is with much pleasure that I write a few lines on the play Kekiri performed by the children of the Anandapura Home in “Elphinston Hall” on 23rd October. I saw the premiere of this performance in Negombo on 6th October and was most impressed. It was obvious that everyone had worked very hard to make this show a success. At the same time it was obvious that the children enjoyed themselves very much being in the stage, showing their talents, which perhaps were largely unknown even to themselves. I am happy that Kekiri will now also be shown in Colombo so that more people will be able to see it and enjoy it.
I congratulate all those who have made Kekiri such a success; let me mention Wim and Dineke Mulders [the organizers], Peter Wellambage [The producer], Rohana Deva Perera of Natya Silpa Shalika and I am sure there are many more who have helped. Of course special congratulations go to the children, since they are the stars of the show!
B.R.Korner
Ambassador of the Netherlands. Colombo, 11 October 1995.

Butterflies Will Always Fly – Directed by Wolfgang Stange and Rohana Deva.

That is indeed a tremendous experience to witness and contemplate -Susanne Loos- Jayawikrema.

The talented dancers are whirling butterflies on stage. The entire audience is overwhelmed. Sympathy changes into genuine respect and admiration. The young artists are a mixed group of disabled and non-disabled youth moving like a perfect unit with the sound of music. The wheelchair-driver carries out difficult figures and positions with his non-disabled partner. Amputations are not perceptible, Down’s syndromes are disappearing beaming faces; deaf youth are swinging perfectly in the rhythms of the sounds. All the mental, Physical or social disabilities do not seem to exist during those memorable moments of performance.
The skilled dancers have even developed considerable charisma. They are radiant appearances full of self esteem. Finally the audience awards them with huge applause and the recognition all of these artists truly deserve, the handicapped as well as the von-handicapped. While watching the performance of “Butterflies Will Always Fly”

FEBRUARY 28, 1999. Colombo.

“Flowers Will Always Bloom” -Directed by Wolfgang Stange and Rohana Deva.

It is the bloody and tragic story of Lanka’s recent history on stage.
The theme of ‘Flowers Will Always Bloom’ is all too familiar to us.

The different communities and religions living together. The New Year revelry changing from crackers to shooting and bombings. The most innocent of the lot, two children, in pursuit of butterflies, becoming the victims. Within a matter of seconds their mother, a Sinhalese [Ramani Damayanthi], is both a widow and childless. It drives her mad. The haunted look we’ve seen in real life soon after such bloodbaths as the Central Bank bombing.
I am no drama critic, but the pin-drop silence during the performance and the loud and sustained applause at its conclusion seemed to say it all. “Shattering”, “Powerful”, “Moving”, “Gripping”, “It brought to us the reality of the war”, were some if the verdicts of both the foreigners and the expatriates who were in the audience.

Kumudini Hettiarachchi-THE SUNDAY TIMES-May 13, 2001

“Swinging Times -a fairy tale for adults”.

Guns. War. Arms deals. Weapons of mass destruction. Things that we have got so accustomed to hearing.

‘Swinging Times – a fairy tale for adults’ brought these themes to life, as it played to appreciative audiences on September 6 and 7 2003 at Bishop’s College auditorium, Colombo. The play was abstract theatre at its best.

We here weapons talk. We hear them quarrel. We hear them enjoy their own entertainment, a show of song and dance. We see their leader in control. We witness their parade. We, they, everyone is being manipulated by the trickster, who laughs at our inability to see the truth.

It is eerie; as they all suddenly break into laughter… at the same time it is heart-warming to witness the joy-full song and dance of a cast comprising those who have long sought acceptance of their creativity, nay, of their ability from society. It is a courageous performance by persons who may seem disadvantaged, but have an indomitable spirit that moves the audience to deep emotion. Perhaps, the most awe-inspiring aspect is that so much human emotion can be drawn, with such little uttered.

The play consisted of minimum talk; maximum acting that came from deep within their hearts. The dynamic cast consisted of those who were physically or mentally disadvantaged, socially marginalized, displaced persons, war victims, and even perfectly normal people of all ethnic communities… all of them brought together in their love for the performing arts.

The play was directed by Wolfgang Stange, Julian Crouch and Rohana Deva, with assistance by Ramani Damayanthi.

By Aaysha Cader - THE SUNDAY TIMES - September 14,2003.

Turtles will never fly
Directed and Choreographed by Wolfgang Stange and Rohana Deva.
Assistant director & Stage Manager: Ramani Damayanthi.

“My reflections on this superb piece of theatre, one of the best to come our way in the last decade”. -Dr. Tissa Abesekara
The day Turtles Flew

Turtles will never fly, of course. But they did, on a memorable evening for me on 18th September 2004 at the Bishop’s College Auditorium {Colombo]. They not only flew, they soared and they wheeled, they leapt and they pirouetted, mid in perfect formation like a flock of homing birds. What was magnificent about this play, Turtles Will Never Fly, directed and choreographed by Wolfgang Stange and Rohana Deva, was that it was brilliantly crafted yet unlike in most such cases of technical virtuosity, the heart was touched. Behind the collage of theatrical effects, the tableaux, the movement, the pageant and the impeccably clustered formations with never a tattered edge or a break, there was a strong emotional centre holding all the elements together. The achievement is to be commended because the dramaturgy was never hitched to a narrative. Perhaps this was pure theatre closer to its ancestral roots of ritual, and something other than ‘once upon-a-time’ was holding the audience. My reflections on this superb piece of theatre, one of the best to come our way in the last decade, has been, since I saw it a fortnight ago, mainly an attempt to understand the alchemy of this magic.
The Butterflies Theatre Company, which has produced and performed before, in the noble exercise of providing the ‘Otherwise Abled’ a platform to feel at one or equal with the ‘Others’ may have a special attribute, which engages US. But that is the very thing that baffles me. The play makes us forger completely that on the stage are, mainly, a group of ‘special’ people. They engage our attention and our emotions in a way that a normal group of highly gifted performers on stage would. Their special status is never allowed to become the key point of contact with the audience during the act, or the main factor in a post-performance assessment of the success of this exercise.
What is this play all about? It opens with a superbly entertaining skit on modern advertising. But it is not about selling or the strategies of the modern market. The scene takes us beyond to lay bare the false values and the synthetic facade of modern consumerism that makes us want things not because they are essential to life, but because capital has to grow to make things better and better not for the consumer, but for a privileged few. The wheels of commerce have to keep turning for one half of humanity to live better than the other half. We’ve heard all this before, but to pare the message down to its core. And present it simply as an exercise both in entertainment and enlightenment is not easy. This what Max Rheinhardt accomplished so well in the turn of the last century and his successor Bertold Brecht developed to such sublime heights in proletarian theatre. Turtles Will Never Fly, does not wear all these artistic brands on its sleeve; it has appropriated all the elements of Brechtian Theatre and made them work most naturally, most simply and therefore most effectively.
After the intermission when the location shifts to the Supreme Institution of State-Parliament –it is a descent into hell. Beneath all that buffoonery, burlesque, and levity, in the spectacle of members pole valuating pulling and pushing, leaping and creeping, a kindergarten with no teacher, there is an unmistakable sense of doom. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The dead protest from their subterranean state of undead, their limbs thrown up in a chilling finale, both moving and disturbing, the madwoman who was the central consciousness of the play, strips the beautiful movie-star-politician to reveal the hideous truth. The circus master keeps clashing the cymbals, coordinating the drama, shepherding the flock, juggling the elements of time and space. The temporal reality here is non-linear; past present and future shift digitally, not analogously. Space too is illusory. Where, is as problematic and indefinite as, when.
In theatre of this nature, where dialogue is at its minimal, it is difficult to read the text. It is, like in jazz, in the performance itself. However, I take the risk of crediting Rohana Deva, with the conceptual structuring an incredible montage of realities and illusions, a weave that hasn’t a stitch in the wrong place. Elements seemingly disparate fall into place, with the precision of a Tibetan Yanthra.
Rohana is a relaxed looking man not too young and too mu h into the middle years, but his charming and unaffected nature, so seemingly without guile, covers a sharp intellect that has observed much, and observed well.
Dr. Tissa Abesekara

Towards ethnic and social amity through theatre

To a medically trained eye, the degrees of physical and mental disability evident in many of the players made the dramatic prowess they displayed almost unbelievable. It proved that a biological disability need not be a social handicap. The abolition of social handicaps imposed by biological disabilities is precisely what transpired on the stage when “Turtles Will Never Fly” was enacted.
They – some of them on wheelchairs – had been made to interact with one another according to a script under the gentle, patient, artistic guidance of Stange, Rohana Deva and Ramani. It probes the themes of real life common to the disabled and the non-disabled. The meaning if existence. The definition of madness. The nature of love. The games politicians play. The suckers that voters are.
The insights come episodically like beams of moonlight or occasionally like sharp rays of sunlight. The music had been composed and conducted by a rapidly rising star in our musical firmament: Navaratne Gamage. What gradually emerged from this collective endeavor was the thing of beauty called “Turtles Will Never Fly”.
-Prof; Carlo Fonseka

The Last Two Minutes
The Last Two Minutes which and here is the wonder- made the contemplation of Death an exhilaratingly enjoyable experience.
–Prof; Carlo Fonseka.

Rohana Deva imaginatively directed it and eerily played the crucial role of the Death [or Maara]. He had also written the lyrics. The play had been brilliantly choreographed by Ramani Damayanthi who also alluringly personified a segment of her own choreography. Janaka Fonseka’s music was out of this world. It still reverberates in my brain. Let me come right out and admit it: I am dying to experience again the contemplation of Death in The Last Two Minutes.
The message of The Last Two Minutes is even less doubtful and perhaps more to the point: “Finally Death is the winner. During the past few years in this thrice-blessed land, not a day has passed without gory verification of that verity. Death has indeed been the only winner.
In the play, the dead man sits up in his coffin. Maara mocks him and taunts him and stingingly exults in the fact that he has finally “done him in” [to adapt Liza Dolittle’s phrase in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion]. Then there is a series of flashbacks in the life of the dead man virtually from the womb to the tomb. The flashbacks tantamount to a potted history of our troubled country from Independence in 1948 up to Eelam War 4. In the recounting we sense how the Sinhalese and Tamils have been schooled by life to think and grow and develop, and love, and hate, and fight, and suffer, and endure. The incidents are organically linked and integrated with breathtaking artistry and superlative technology such as I have rarely seen on the local stage. In the working out of the plot, aspects of the culture of the country, its truths and myths, and prejudices, and drumbeats, and witchcraft, and dance forms, and varieties of music are brought to the stage for all to see.
Finally we are made to realize that gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain which make the world go round are nothing but paths to Death. No one who is born is free from death preached the Compassionate Buddha.
-Prof; Carlo Fonseka

“A Prayer for Peace”

When we cease to care,
When we treat each other as commodities,
We destroy each other.

We pray to you O Lord Shiva,
We entreat you O Lord Buddha,
To guide us and to teach us,
To value and cherish each other once again.
Show us the way to Peace.

O Jesus Christ,
We hear the call from Bethlehem,
We see the pure white doves
Flying high over your city, and
We pray for peace.

The full moon shines,
Brightly upon us during Ramadan.
The faithful are praying,
On their knees to you,
O Allah.
We all are praying for Peace.

We must shape our own destinies,
O brothers and sisters;
Make our hearts one with yours.
Let us sow the seeds of peace together.

Composed by Rohana Deva for ‘A Prayer for Peace’
This was choreographed by Ramani Damayanthi for
THIDORA THEATRE and performed in Thalawathugoda,
Sri Lanka.
[Duration 11mins.]