Filed under: about us
Going to India with this bunch was so fantastic. Travelling about in India is often considered quite a hard trip to begin with. Getting there was hard enough. We had to organise how the 12 of us would get there, but nothing quite as simple as ‘12 round trip tickets to Delhi and back please.’ I was naive enough to agree to coordinate the travel logistics for the group (Ruwanthie’s subtle strong arming tactics– she’s mastered the art of tyranny, you don’t even know it, but you end up doing exactly what she wants, but she appears so reasonable about the whole thing that you just can’t say no, and I’m also bit a of a pushover…)
Let’s see if I remember. Adam and Thushan needed to get back to Colombo early, Nimmi needed to hang about in Bombay and meet fancy film stars and be all chic after everybody else came back home, and Shakthi and I had to come back to work in the middle of the trip. Ayesha meanwhile had to come back from Thailand and get to Banaglore in time for the second theatre festival. So yes, that was lots of fun. Scary thing is I still get calls from Sri Lankan airlines asking if Mr. Mohammed Adamaly is flying to Delhi in October and I feel like I’m stuck in some time warp… Leaving Colombo was quite uneventful except that Ryan left behind the chocolate brownies he brought for us and we were all quite sad about that. I had torn a ligament (while leaping off a 2-foot stool in the middle of rehearsal a few days prior to our departure), so once we got to Delhi, they got me a wheelchair. That was both fun and bizarre. There was also a very pretty Sri Lankan airlines’ pilot who stopped by to say hi to us… but wait, I digress.
Touring four cities over two weeks alongside a whole bunch of theatrical South Asians [Indians, Bhutanis, Pakistanis (though that was quite short lived as they fought with the Indian organisers and ran away after the first two days), Bangladeshis and Nepalis] was actually a ton of fun. And while it might sound like we are too up on ourselves, I think we can safely say that the Sri Lankan team was the most popular. (more…)
Filed under: What's next?
From the moment Ru first talked ‘Checkpoint’ in 2001, I was really hooked. It was one evening at ‘Kithu Sevana’. I can’t remember most of the people who were there that night, but I ended up working with some great people like Adam, Dylan (local theatre’s most fired actor),Shanaka, Nimmi, Ryan, Amal and Gihan, Sam, Ravin, Sharmini, Amali, Suren… sorry if I’ve left anyone out.
I was happy to get involved mostly because I love Augusto Boal and his amazing experiments in Forum Theatre with grassroots levels of society, but also because I would be working with Nimmi for the first time since college together at Goldsmiths’.
I had already seen Tara’s play performed by Metho at an Interact comp the year before (I think) and had liked it, and working on it was heaps of fun. Pol Pot is my kind of director, and I feel very comfortable working for her because she is not didactic, and she is open to others’ ideas, and will use it to improve the concept overall, instead of trying to bury her actors alive. (more…)
CHECKPOINT – three strangely normal plays was first produced in Sri Lanka in 2001. It sold out its first run and due to popular demand went into a second run – which was also a sell out success. Following the immense impact of the production, Stages has received many requests to re-run the play.
In November 2005, the production – sporting a new cast – was toured across India as part of two separate theatre festivals; the WIPSA Festival of South Asian Theatre which was toured in the cities of Lucknow, Varanasi and Bubhaneshwar; and the Bahuroopi National Theatre Festival in Mysore. The troupe received critical acclaim for its performances in each of these cities. The Forum Theatre segment of the play received special mention, as this provided a completely new theatrical experience for the audiences.
What’s in a name?
‘CHECKPOINT – three strangely normal plays’, as its name implies, is a compilation of three pieces of theatre that have been chosen because they each provide intriguing reality checks into the world around us. Like all good theatre, these plays expose the strangeness of our normal lives, a strangeness that is at the same time funny and disturbing.
Filed under: about us
How we first came to be…
Not unlike most other theatre companies in Sri Lanka (we suspect) the exact beginning of Stages remains lost somewhere in the crevices of a noisy, confusing conversation (possibly made more noisy and confusing by some degree of intoxication) about the power, the laughter and the potential of theatre followed by a fleetingly mad idea – why don’t we try and make this last?
This conversation first took place between friends in the year 2000. And the conversation has recurred with amazing tenacity throughout the years, the productions, workshops, tours, ups and downs of theatre life. Always, the madness of the idea of forging ahead is countered and defeated only by the madness of the idea of giving up.
What are we interested in?
Stages has some basic objectives. We have a commitment to create a space and an environment for Sri Lankan writers to showcase their work. And so Original Sri Lankan Plays are high on our priority in terms of productions.
Filed under: What's next?
Our next production.
- Production : Checkpoint
- Dates : 1st to 5th of September, 2006
- Time : 7:30 pm
- Venue : British School Theatre
Come and watch!
