Stages Theatre Group

Acting in a play is undoubtedly a difficult, time consuming and ardous task… and thats just for the people who actually LIKE to act and are good at it. For one (such as myself) who could be best described as ‘acting impaired” – being cast in a play is nothing short of stressful… and thats just an euphamism! Below is the painful chronicle of my trip to India and attempts to act in Checkpoint.. subtitled ‘how I tested Ruwanthies love for me’.

It all started with one of those spontaenous bursts of affection by Ruwanthie – she was feeling benevolent I guess… having received not one but TWO invitations to bring over some of her plays to India – coupled with the fact that some of the regular “real” actors of checkpoint couldn’t make it for the trip… (oh some flimsy excuses – pregnancy, work, etc ….) Anyway bottom line… she suddenly asked me if I would like to come. See there was this non speaking part in The 24 Hour Store and since I have been generally considered a fair …oh what the hell.. why be modest?? Self esteem is not too high anyway – I’m a DAMN GOOD dancer … you cant go wrong with movement right???
Poor Ruwanthie – t’was her undoing… sigh….

Of course I couldnt make it for the whole trip, because I had to go to Thailand for a conference (and for those of you who cant help but wonder – it was a RELIGIOUS trip!!!) so I was scheduled to go for the second festival – the bahuroopi festival scheduled for Mysore… but I digress … the rehearsal procedure must be catalouged – what a mortifying process!
Rehearsals initially (in my opinion) went off quite well. But little did I know that Ruwa was just being nice… hoping against hope that once I had memorised the sequence of movements I would kinda ‘get’ the fact that I was supposed to be a mannequin (i.e.- stiff) as opposed to a string puppet (i.e. – not). But no …
to be fair however, she came at me very gradually – so my self respect was not shattered all in one go.
It started with a very basic “open your eyes” … WHAT??? I was closing them??? Thats how I always look! But then Amal very kindly informed me that I had always looked at the world through half closed eyes and I needed to make an effort…. to excercise those eyelids which had been doing only half their job all this while.
So after opening and staring with tears streaming down my eyes, I thought I had “got it” and everything was ok… BUT… I was next told to “look up”. Being somewhat vertically impaired one would think that this wouldnt be a problem, because being blessed with unusually tall friends, looking up while they are talking has become a very automatic reaction – my neck just responds. Yet something in me just closes up when conciously ‘acting’ – therefore neck was reverting to primal birth function. (lolling as though my head was too heavy for it to support) Yet I made a brave effort to look up – only to be told that I was not opening my eyes again.
Next it was the movement – “be stiff – plastic – you’re too relaxed”. I never mentioned it then Ruwa.. … but I was most certainly NOT! Because having being endowed with at least ’second tier’ intelligence, I was now beginning to realise that I was the hamartia (tragic flaw to all of you who didnt study greek tragedy) of the cast. To make matters worse Piyumi was playing my role for the WIPSA festival, which meant that I had to be compared to HER – a professional (well practically!) actress…! Ruwanthie to her credit was still being really diplomatic and I understand totally Ru that you must have been at your wits end, when you asked me to go over all the movements during rehearsal ALONE so that you could ‘fix me up’ as best as you could. It didnt really help though that Amal decided to watch and pass comments – I felt so small and all alone … “can we keep him?” (Lion King 1993)
The only thing that kept me going at this point was dogged determination and a hankering to be closer to Ryan who gave me superb spine massages… which by the way I miss very much. Also there was the fact that we were doing a little go-go dance which I knew was a chance to redeem myself and i most certainly was not the worst person there…. such are the petty pleasures of life…!
Anyway Thailand came and went (and with it the acquisition of many pairs of shoes) and soon it was time for Mysore… (shudder…) landed in Bangalore and from there embarked on the most torturous bus ride ever known to man in the history of bus travel. (and being a regular commuter during rush hour in Colombo I know what I’m talking about!) We went to Mysore via some of the most bumpy, dusty, pot holy untarred roads which even Amal’s i-pod could not redeem… anyway having got there, we were dropped off at the festival venue while Amal and Ruwanthie went to discuss ‘important things’ with the organisers. It didnt take long for us to get involved in a massive group dance because the beat they were dancing to was so similar to that of the baila. Some good looking guys were doing a complicated very cool looking hoppy skippy sort of dance which I privately vowed to learn … but until such time, Nimmi and I went and did the baila. We were the source of much amused attention – and it helped that Nimmi looks the way she does….
Rehearsals began again the next day and much to my horror I learned that these buggers had CHANGED things in the play for want of anything better to do, while gallivanting around India on the Wipsa festival. So in addition to having to remember to open my eyes, look up and BE PLASTIC… I also had to learn some new movements. ahhhh the horror… the turmoil… the looks of exasperation from everyone else except Gihan who was oblivious to the disaster that was taking place…
Ruhanie and Nimmi tried to take me in hand, Amal tried to take me in hand, Ryan… well Ryan didnt care… but still… what I’m trying to say was that after all this collective effort I was atleast looking a little less puppetish. (or so I fondly believe). Come show day I was really nervous. Didnt help that Nimmi would say ‘I hope we dont mess up” and TRY not to look at me. Anyway performance began and all was going as well as it could considering the handicap aka me… but wouldnt you know the irony??? Lights went off in the middle of the dance and we had to stay with our hands in the air for a good five minutes until Ruwanthie decided to rescue us and motioned for us to get off stage. This helped me to relax considerably because I realised that everything was just relative. But I dont know if that made me look more puppetish…. aahhhhh!
The next show was much tighter because I finally GOT an analogy – Ruhanie explained that she always imagined she had a metal rod stuck down her spine which constricted her movement. ‘aahhhh… why didnt someone just SAY???’ …. improved greatly but everyone was too nervous to notice…
Second performance went off much better and we were all elated – mostly at the prospect of a real Sri Lankan meal thanks to Shehan one of Nimmi’s (and now all of ours) friends. In the meantime, I learned the mysore folk dance along with everyone else and we ended our stay there by doing an impromptu performance with all these ‘young hot Indian dudes yaar’ for a good half hour – aney Nimmi what was ‘my guys’ name? I really dont remember – Nimmi kept calling him “oyage ekkena” and that stuck. We then took the dance to Bangalore – the rooftop of a seedy pub in nagarbhavi, and the middle of National law School. (and Iromi I dont want to talk about the other occasion)

Anyway that was the sordid tale of my brush with acting…. which as you may have gathered is not happening this time around. We all learn from our mistakes… I have my doubts about ruwanthie though – who called and asked if I wanted to act this time as well… but then her love for me has always been blind.
But no … considering myself a true lover of the arts, I have decided not to inflict my half closed eyes, string puppet demeanour and lowered head upon Colombo’s thespians. Which is all the more reason why everyone should go and watch it… see guys??? Publicity!!!! (Anyway I had exams)

So there ends my saga – bad actors be warned! I would like to end with a quote from TLC:

“Dont go chasing waterfalls….
Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to”
(TLC, 1995)

PS – Mysore folk dancing classes conducted ….reasonable fees…. contact me via this blog.

CHECKPOINT – Three Strangely Normal Plays will be performed by the Stages Theatre Group in the new state-of-the-art British School Auditorium, from the 1st to the 5th of September 2006. First produced in Sri Lanka in 2001 and subsequently toured in India in 2005, the play has received excellent reviews from audiences and critics alike. See our reviews section to read them!

CHECKPOINT comprises three short plays, namely “Last bus eke kathawa” – a one man show, “The 24 hour Store” – a one act play and “Forum Theatre” – a unique piece of theatre where the audience gets involved in creating the drama.

The plays are directed by award winning playwright Ruwanthie de Chickera who is the Artistic Director of Stages. (Some call her Pol pot – we’ll leave you to figure out the nuances)

The cast includes some of the best known names in English Theatre, such as Mohammed Adamaly, Tracy Holsinger, Nimmi Harasgama, Piyumi Samaraweera, Ryan Holsinger, Ruhanie Perera, Shanaka Amarasinghe, Gihan de Chickera and Dylan Perera.

The Production serves as a fundraiser for a tsunami housing scheme funded by the KPMG Trust and is sponsored by Mobitel.

The ‘Daily Mirror’ and ‘Sunday Times’ serve as the print media sponsors, while the electronic media sponsor is ‘TNL Radio Network.

For more information about the plays, check out the History of Checkpoint …. information on cast will be published soon – that one you DONT want to miss.

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…)

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. 

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