‘Danga Malla’ comes to Borella

Nalaka Swarnathillake’s award winning play ‘Danga Malla saha Amuthu Iskole’ will be staged on Saturday at 3.30 pm and 6.30 pm on August 17 at Namel Malani Punchi Theatre, Borella.

The play adored by both children and elders is an a d ap t at i o n of “The Naughtiest girl in the school’ written by the famous children’s writer Enid Blyton. Internationally famed book had been translated into 40 languages including Sinhala which was done by Ganga Niroshani Suduwelikanda.

The play consists of 20 child artistes of which the main c haracte ris performed by Nelissa Algama while Kusum Renu, Ramani Siriwardena, Nilmini Sigera, Malkanthi Jayasingeh and Sanjeewa Upendra are also featuring in the rest of the cast.

Music by Nuwan Vithange, choreograph by Harshika Rathnayake, make up by Bhanu Prasanna and lighting by Ranga Samarakon while stage management by Asoka Weerathuga. All seats have been box planned and tickets will be available at the Namel Malani Punchi Theatre.

At the first look Kafka’s book was an unadoptable story. It was a kind of a literature itself.

It’s story about where the protagonist one day changed to a giant insect. I asked from the script writer, Eric Illayapparachchi one of the finest writers how could we do this as the adaptation was a difficult task. Anyhow we made it to a periodic film that runs from 1920s to late 1950s.

According to the story the main character is a pharmaceutical salesman. When we were writnig the script, we were reflecting on what Professor Senaka Bibile tried to do in Sri Lanka. We thought of bringing out issues related to drug trade. The main character in the story is a victim of drug trade and competition. We think that with tie and coat these people are very happy but the truth is they are a suffering lot.

The country must quickly change to digital cinema. We are wasting a lot of money because of the old system. The government must face this challenge and face the natural transformation. There is a kind of nostaligia and we also did not like the death of celluloid. But we have to accept the reality.

The country quickly needs some digital theatres and these should not be massive theatres but mini-theatres. The best option is multiple cinema complexes .

It is a pity that these kind of things are happening. The Censor Board or Public Performance Board has been established by a Parliamentary Act and they are the people who can judge a film whether it is good or bad. This has nothing to do with the Defence Ministry. Now they say that this post-war problems are very complex. So artiste are is not there to artificially exaggerate government’s ideology. So now these people think that this is damaging the image of the country. But what is the image we have nationally or internationally about the government or the state. It has already been damaged. So internationally it is well-known that this is now a country going away from democracy. Everybody knows this and these are things that are deep within our society.

Artistes are people who does their creation with a vision and they should be free. Now we don’t have freedom to talk and freedom to discuss. They want the artistes to go with the government’s ideology and they want the filmmakers to do propaganda films. So they want films with nationalistic views. This really damages the film indus-

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