Yesterday me and a friend (or a friend and I) went to see a play which is running as part of the Bharat Rang Utsav 2011. I must say, that I've never seen a play at LTG on Copernicus Marg, but it was a decent enough auditorium.
The play was "The Dragon" and it looked at the impact of totalitarian rule on a populace. Lancelot, the knight in shining armour, would be the saviour of the town from The Dragon, an omnipresent and ruthless dictator, personified as a dragon.
The play was in Sri Lankan.
The entrance was spectacular, and it sent chills up your spine. I really liked the way they showed through music, art and acting how affected people were by The Dragon.
One disappointing aspect was that even though subtitles were promised, there were none. Just a summary of each scene was posted on the LCD screens that were positioned on either side of the stage. (That's btw how subtitles run in a play.) This was in stark contrast to Mareechka, where every line was translated.
A lot of people left as a result, which was unfortunate, considering the time and energy that had gone into the performance.
In Sinhala, the play translated means "Makaraakshaya".
The playwright is Yevgeny Shvarts. The director was Dharmasiri Bandaranayake. From the Director's note
"I decided to do a new production of this play in the year 2010, because I believe that we are still not too late to understand the catastrophe faced by the whole society. Today, are we not submitting ourselves and applauding the same old fascism that the whole world once united to turn to ashes? Does this play make us think? If not, then what else does it do?"
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