production Archive

Take a look at our early productions!

Two Times

Two is Two

2000

Written and directed by
Ruwanthie de Chickera

Performed in
2000 and 2002

What if we were stripped of the ability to conceal out thoughts? If we were denied the privilege of tempering, toning down, censoring or even recasting our feelings before making them public? Would the consequences be funny? Tragic? Ridiculous? Or perfect material for a play?

Short Listed for the “World Student Drama Trust Award” for the 22nd International Student Playscript Competition, London, 1998, Two Times Two is Two is an ‘absurd’ play which examines the workings of the subconscious.

From its humble beginnings – an unknown cast and an untested director, Two times Two is Two rose almost instantaneously to be one of the most enjoyed performance pieces in English Theatre in Sri Lanka.

Inspired by an experimental artistic concept, this funny and touching drama on the theme of missed opportunities and the difficulty to communicate, brilliantly depicts its simple plot with a twist. It brings on to stage, the dramatic world in which the boundaries between mind and body no longer exist.

Checkpoint

Three Strangely Normal Plays

2001

Directed by
Ruwanthie de Chickera

Written by
Dhanjaya Karunaratne (Last Bus eke Kathawa)
Tara Kumarasinghe – (24 Hour Store)
Ruwanthie de Chickera – (24 Hrs)

Performed in
2001

‘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.

When CHECKPOINT – Three Strangely Normal Plays was first performed by Stages Theatre Group in Colombo in 2001, checkpoints were as common as night boutiques in the city. Like the name of the production, the content too was extremely relevant to Colombo theatre goers at the time and it was widely acknowledged as a ground-breaking piece of Sri Lankan theatre.

CHECKPOINT – Three Strangely Normal Plays was first produced in Sri Lanka in July 2001. It enjoyed two highly successful sell-out runs at the British Council. Following the immense success of the production, Stages has received many requests to re-run the play.

2002

FILLING THE BLANKS

Directed by
Ruwanthie de Chickera

Written by
Nadie Kammallaweera, Namal Jayasinghe, Amal de Chickera, Thushara Hettihamu and Sandamali Wijeratne

Performed in
2002

Filling the Blanks was created as part of an international writing collaboration organised by the Contact Theatre in Manchester, with the Commonwealth Games Cultural festival – which was to be held in Manchester, that year, in mind.

The Contact Theatre selected sixteen youth theatre groups (eight from England and eight international) and pairing the groups off, started a writing process which resulted in a youth theatre festival in Manchester 2002.

Stages Theatre Group was picked to be part of this exchange and we were partnered with a youth theatre group from Scotland, called Sherman. The process began with an exchange of images and questions and answers between the group, which formed the basis for the new plays to be created.

The Stages Theatre Group play was written by five emerging writers from the English and Sinhala Stage.

Filling the Blanks,was a play which addressed the issues of displacement and ownership, rising out of the protracted Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. Created during the short Cease Fire and historic reopening of the A9 road, the play was about a journey back North.

The Mirror Making Factory

2003

Written and directed by
Ruwanthie de Chickera

Devised with
The Sahanaya Ensemble

Performed in
2003

“Don't Sri Lankan cows produce the right kind of milk for our babies? Is it ugly to keep the skin tone we were born with ? Do we have to use toothpaste to sharpen our incisors ? Is it normal to believe all these things? In the middle of all these questions comes a play like The Mirror Making Factory.

The audience is taken on a walk-through of the "Modern Man Foundation" (MMF) a revolutionary institution which gears people to face life in the new millennium. The progress of one MMF applicant is monitored through the play and the audience discovers exactly what a modern man is made of.

Drawing on various aspects of popular culture, television and advertising and various events such as TV quiz shows and Oscar awards, Ruwanthie's team of players demonstrate the way in which public responses can be and are manipulated and tallied according to the needs of a globalised world in which obedience, discipline and a low level of self-esteem and confidence are required characteristics.

The language of the script of the "Mirror Making Factory" is extraordinary and must especially be commended for the almost flawlessly smooth way in which it flows from Sinhala to English and back to Sinhala. It uses colloquial expressions and jargon in a tongue in cheek manner, and yet manages to convey the disturbing and fundamental question the play raises about human existence in all its depth and intensity.”

-Kushani Ratnayake for the Daily News, 30th May 2003

A Poet,
a Puppet and
a Papadam

2004

Written and directed by
Ruwanthie de Chickera

Performed in
2004

The play is adaptation of Indian author Mahasveta Devi’s two short stories ‘Urvashi and Johnny’ and ‘The Poet’s Wife’, reproduced with a Lankan flavour by Ruwanthie de Chickera as ‘The Jony and Urvashi Show’ and ‘The Blind Poet’.

Presented by the University of Colombo and Stages Theatre Group, ‘A Poet, a Puppet and Papadam’, was staged in January 2004 at the Lionel Wendt Theatre.

Checkpoint

Three Strangely Normal Plays

(Re-run in Colombo, September 2006)

2006

In November 2005, the production – sporting a new cast - was toured in 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.

CHECKPOINT – Three Strangely Normal Plays was next revived, revamped and performed in Sri Lanka in September 2006, as the maiden performance in the British School Auditorium.

Once again, it was a sell out success.

Checkpoint

Three Strangely Normal Plays

(Tour of India, 2007)

2007

In 2007, CHECKPOINT was invited again to India on two separate occasions. First, as part of the Bharat Rang Mahaotsav – the highly acclaimed National School of Drama annual theatre festival. For the 2007 festival, the National School of Drama invited Stages to perform CHECKPOINT, not only in Delhi, but in Calcutta too, as part of the Festival’s parallel satellite festival.

The second Indian festival CHECKPOINT was performed at was at the the ‘MetroFest’ international theatre festival organised by ‘The Hindu’ (the newspaper), in Chennai, August, 2007.

production Archive

Two Times

Two is Two

Checkpoint

FILLING THE BLANKS

The Mirror Making Factory

A Poet, a Puppet anda Papadam

Checkpoint

Checkpoint

A Poet,
a Puppet and
a Papadam