Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Saturday, 7 December 2019 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Celebrating 18 years of groundbreaking theatre, CentreStage Productions headed by Jehan Aloysius presented the CentreStage Festival last week, showcasing songs from two new brand new productions – ‘Venus United’ and ‘Serendipity!’
Singers Kumudini David, Nadeeni Perera, Andrea Melisa, Amandhi Caldera, Dion Nanayakkara and Sean Amarasekare took the stage to bring the productions to life, as Jehan looked on, beaming with justifiable pride, surrounded by those nearest and dearest to him who have supported him through the years.
‘Serendipity!’
‘Serendipity!’ is Jehan’s newest script, finished just this year, although the show and music have been in development over the last decade.
‘Serendipity!’ is a spiritual musical about soul mates’ connected destiny. Set on the sun-kissed beaches of Sri Lanka, it has a strong dance component as well as a plot that is rich in romance and drama.
The story revolves around an American choreographers who finds himself stranded by accident on the beach, while travelling through Sri Lanka. He soon finds himself thrust into the lives of the beach community that befriends him.
Jason soon finds romance and begins his journey to fund himself and his calling.
Jehan considers ‘Serendipity!’ as a “love letter to Sri Lanka” since it celebrates exotic beaches, music, dance and local culture. The musical became especially meaningful to him after the Easter Sunday attacks, when he wrote the final song – ‘Home Is In My Heart’.
The music and lyrics of ‘Serendipity!’ are composed by Jehan, who also took on the additional challenge of orchestrating and performing the music for this show himself. As a self-taught musician and composer who has never studied music and is unable to read musical notation or identify a chord, he hopes his performance has done justice to his composition.
‘Venus United’
‘Venus United’ is an experimental musical concept, written and composed by Jehan from the years 2014 to 2018. It features strong female characters in a contemporary and universal scenario. It contains bold lyrics and songs that were based on various testimonials. The story revolves around three vastly different women who attend a drama therapy workshop – an actress, a singer and a performance therapist. As the workshop progresses, each women shares their story and the group builds a sisterhood.
They seem to strip away their masks, expressing their deepest vulnerabilities and desires. In doing so, they discover themselves and each other, empowering them through their shared experience.
The music and lyrics are composed by Jehan, orchestrated and performed by Jehan’s long-time musical collaborator and dearest friend Avanti Perera.
CentreStage Productions
CentreStage Productions is an amateur theatre troupe founded in 2001 by its Artistic Director Jehan Aloysius, in order to produce and promote original theatre in Sri Lanka. Its focus has always been on fostering theater skills in young people – from scriptwriting to performing, direction and production.
CentreStage Productions has had many groundbreaking achievements which have also come to the attention of the international community. Its troupe is known for its signature physical theatre, acrobatics and spectacular singing, which is often coupled with original music and a fusion of Eastern and Western dance forms.
Its productions are regularly studied in local universities and several scripts have been nominated for Sri Lanka’s most coveted literary award, The Gratiaen Prize.
Its shows have toured around Sri Lanka, including Jaffna during the war. But since 2002, its shows have regularly represented original Sri Lankan theatre overseas at theatre festivals in India, Poland, Norway, the UK and others.It also represented Sri Lanka at the Theatre Olympics in 2018 as well as Asia’s largest theatre festival, The Bharat Rang Mahotsav, on several occasions.
CentreStage Productions operates in the English and Sinhala languages and produces bilingual productions and workshops.
In 2005, after the tsunami, it established its humanitarian ‘StageHands Project,’ which uses theatre for initiating social change that can develop, empower and mobilise communities to grapple with social and personal issues.
In 2009, it began formulating approaches to teaching and working with the disabled and created groundbreaking ‘mixabilities’ productions of ‘An Inspired Swam Lake’ and ‘Nutcracker,’ which have been featured on CNN and BBC.
These productions combined soldiers who had lost their limbs during the war, with deaf and disabled performers, who were all trained and choreographed by Jehan.
In 2014 CentreStage Productions represented Sri Lanka at the ‘Unlimited Festival’ in London, which is the world’s largest festival of disability arts.
In 2017 CentreStage Productions established the ‘Power Of One Project,’ which is a series of volunteer workshops for schools, to address the issue of bullying and ragging in universities. These proejcts are funded with the proceeds of its shows and all its team members are volunteers.
CentreStage Festival
At the CentreStage Festival held last week, the songs featured from ‘Venus United’ were: ‘Women,’ ‘Dance,’ ‘Cinderella Rap,’ ‘There’s Something I Must Say,’ ‘I’m Not Your Sweetheart, and ‘Audition Seduction’.
The songs featured from ‘Serendipity!’ were: ‘Moonlight,’ ‘Serendipity,’ ‘Here Will Always Be My Home,’ ‘Two Hearts,’ ‘The One,’ ‘Replication’ and ‘Home Is In My Heart’.
The event crew for the festival comprised: lights – Michael Jayawardene and Thushan Dias; sound – Stephan Wijesinghe and Unique Sounds; AV production – Dion Nanayakkara; artwork and logos – Dion and Kaushitha; catering – Mishka Fernando and Tharindu Perera; photographer – Dushyantha Hettiarachchi; compere – Tahsha de Silva; and ushers Anya, Dirk, Suneragiri and Eshan.
Supporting the event were Thushan Dias – Mahinda Dias Engineers; Dilrukshi Rambukwella – The Lionel Wendt, Print Sponsors Promo Watch, Cake by The Bake Store Colombo, Kishan Perera and the team of Unique Sounds, the cast of singers, the crew and the ushers.
Pix by Shehan Gunasekara
