TAMIL DRAMA FESTIVAL 2012

TAMIL PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY

 PRESENTS 

TAMIL DRAMA FESTIVAL 2012 

 THREE PLAYS 

DIRECTED BY K .BALENDRA

 AT PUMP HOUSE THEATRE 
LOCAL BOARD ROAD 
LOWER HIGH STREET 
WATFORD WD17 2JP 

ON 13TH SATURDAY OCTOBER 2012 

AT 6.30PM 

 THANK YOU KIND REGARDS
 TAMIL PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY.

Aanmaiyo Aannmai (Macho o Macho!)

Marappachi

presents

Aanmaiyo Aannmai (Macho o Macho!) 

Script
V. Geetha

Direction]
A. Mangai

On Commedia dell’ arte
Commedia dell’ arte (comedy of skills) is a satirical form that is about social equality. It developed in Italy from the 12th – 18^th centuries.  The pleasure of comedy corresponds to our need to overcome fear – of death, of hunger, of lost control, of ourselves and each other – and so these themes are explored in the comic tradition. In our work together on Commedia dell’arte, Marappachi developed locally relevant character masks who could explore the world around them.  When we present characters, we imagine the most extreme extent of their personalities and desires, and are true to that.  The use of mask is at once a tool and a ritual of communication, opening a direct emotional channel between audience, performers, and masks.  Mask happens on a grander scale than our everyday lives, relative to the great human and social landscapes that art must explore. It is this process of amplification that enables us to see more clearly. 

    Mar Stine

Today, in Tamil Nadu, we do not possess a historical memory of the Self-respect movement’s vision of women’s liberation. What happened to all those revolutionary, intelligent women in the movement who were enthusiastically present and active in the public sphere? Why did that heritage not yield a feminist politics in the years after? This play is a search for answers to these questions.
Rather than focusing on the the women who were thus ‘decieved’ and made to disappear from the public sphere, the play calls attention to the masculinised logic that achieved this deception. Arguments and counter-arguments on a range of issues - a masculinised political sphere and the discourses that shape it, the choices made by those who were and are active in this sphere and the imagination that keeps it alive – structure the play; while humour, satire, anger and sorrow move the scenes along. This play marks a distinctive moment in our feminist politics.

      V. Geetha

Undermining the role of women and their points of view in public space is not new in history.  It is slighted, criticized or belittled for reasons best known to gender hierarchised social structure.  Yet it becomes impossible to remain unaffected when the systems believed to be progressive give away their true nature.  One has been part of its making; one deals with these realities on a daily basis.  Humour alone possesses the necessary strength to articulate our failed hopes and frustrating realities.  Nobel Laureate Dario Fo, the Italian political theatre artist has provided a mode by which one can make statements of the most abominable political contexts through Commedia dell’ arte.  This production deploys that form to treat art and politics as equally significant.  What else can one do but laugh till it hurts, when one engages with the political history of Tamil Nadu from a gender perspective!
                                                                                                A. Mangai

Ernest Macintyre and Vijitha Yapa Publications welcome your presence On the occasion of The launch of IRANGANI On Monday 17 September 2012 from 7 PM to 8.30 PM Followed by cocktails from 8.30 PM to 9.30 PM At The Dutch Burgher Union Hall 114 Reid Avenue Colombo 4 IRANGANI is a two act play by Ernest Macintyre, which has been performed In Australia. It uses the central situation of Antigone the 5th century BC play of Sophocles in a modern Sri Lankan plot in which Irangani Jayaweera whose brother has been killed in the Sinhala youth uprising of the 1980s finds herself in the same plight as her ancient Greek predecessor Antigone: prohibition by the state, of family funeral ceremonies. From this central plot the play traverses significant areas in Sri Lanka’s modern history as observed by Australian reviewers – “ Fascinatingly cross cultural……The outcome is moving, the tragedy of a country at war with itself…..but at the heart there is still the issue of a sister trying to give a proper burial to a brother” – The Canberra Times The book will be launched by IRANGANISERASINGHEwho first gave Sri Lankan audiences a version of Antigone. Jean Anouilh’s 1942 play, written in the environment of Nazioccupied France was directed by Professor E.F.C. Ludowykfor the University Dramatic Society in Colombo, with IranganiSerasinghe performing the title role. At this launch dramatised readings by Sri Lankan actors will be performed from the English original of Iranganias well as from the Sinhala and Tamil translations , to be published in November.
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SUBATHTHIRAN: POET OF THE PEOPLE