Feroze Kamardeen

We see an edgy young man making a blithering nuisance of himself in public. He buttonholes an individual minding his own business, and fires a volley of weird and wacky ideas at the unfortunate soul. Bit by bit, he erodes the increasingly discomfited man’s composed facade – until in the play’s denouement, he engineers a very tragic end…

But you need to have seen Edward Albee’s absurdist drama The Zoo Story to understand how brilliant Feroze Kamardeen was in that role of the tortured Jerry.

Today, that actor turned director is no different from the taunting character he played so memorably way back in 1989. And he’s still not above hijacking innocent audiences and bombarding them with the most outlandish ideas.

Little by little, the talented thespian who once wore two hats has encroached on our mindscape, and challenged the feelings and thinking of society on a host of sociopolitical issues.

These days however, the neurotic young actor has matured (ahem…) into a more restrained version of his former self. Although if you’ve sat through his traditionally very long productions, you would have noted that the mania hasn’t quite abated. Nor has his intense genie abandoned the man.

And in standup comedy, he has discovered perhaps the perfect vehicle to showcase Colombo’s frivolity and Sri Lanka’s foibles – together with a genius cast and crew ensemble that he marshals like a petty dictator strutting his hour upon a stage.

Full of nervous energy in speech and mannerisms, the unrepentant auteur has an agenda of late… to challenge and change a rather lackadaisical island’s citizenry from being the audience into active agents in their own transformation.

Wijith DeChickera was at his wits’ end trying to catch the busy buzzing businesslike showman backstage for a quiet – well, as staid as can be with a manic impresario whose mind is always ticking over with fresh ideas for a new script – chat… on the man behind the mask.