We all write plays. Be it with pen and paper or a revision of a phone-call-gone-wrong in our heads, the aspiring playwright within us continues to recreate the world how it wants.
Not often though, do we enjoy the satisfaction of realizing our play in the form of real actors, a real stage and a real audience. The Ceylon University Dramatic Society and the English Literary Association of the University of Peradeniya make such a realization true for aspiring thespians with the production of ‘The Commode’.
The play is written by Dhanuka Bandara and co-directed with Rashmi Fernando,
with music by Ajith Dharmasiri: all undergraduates from the University of Peradeniya. The style of the play is intentionally anti-Aristotelian, as well as anti-showbiz and utilizes a
set that is minimalist to the extreme. The play is presented in three parts: ‘the subaltern can speak’, ‘smoking rights activists’ and ‘deconstruction of the commode’.
“It’s a poetic/dramatic critique of what is politic and political” Dhanuka says, ‘politic and political’ meaning the paan and parippu of the undergraduate life: culture, politics and love-
affairs. “‘The Commode’ kitschifies the theory of love and other laudable, laughable theories and eventually deconstructs itself; metaphorically, theoretically and literally.” It puts forth warped situations of the world that question the ‘realities’ in which we exist. The play is the mind of the undergraduate, the classroom in action; the world at large.
Be at the E. O. E. Pereira Theatre, Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya today, Sunday, July 11 at 4.30p.m. |
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