To Sir with love
Remembering Vinodh Senadeera in song, verse and theatre
Vinodh Senadeera was a legend in the wings. A dramatist who loved- better than the spotlight- the afternoons of rehearsals in a half-empty hall; the last minute skittishness and wishes to ‘break a leg’; and the final exultation of seeing his cast pack a punch on stage.
Vinodh was drama and choral director for his school S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia, while performing the services of precentor at the school chapel. He did, however, have a busy life away from the Anglican fastness- for he was also involved- among other things- with the Colombo International School and Visakha Vidyalaya.
Two days shy of his first death anniversary last month, the choirs and thespians inspired by the charismatic guru came together to pay tribute- and called the evening The Show Must Go On.
It was designed to reflect the spirit of Vinodh- his favourite songs and plays and books collaged to give a soulprint of the man.
The choirs for the night were the S. Thomas’ Canto Perpetua, Visakha Vidyalaya choir, the CIS choir, Nuovo Vita and the De Lanerolle Brothers.
The STC choir began with Thank You for the Music. The numbers ranged from the timeless Ubi caritas to Katy Perry- passing through the haunting dusky African savanna beats of Shosholoza/ Siyahamba and Lion King’s He lives in you.
While the musical element triggered nostalgia, the selected literary pieces conjured a picture of Vinodh as a humanist with an aesthetic sensibility.
There was a dramatic reading of The Kite Runner and a scene from Taming of the Shrew- this last by the Thomian cast who under Vinodh won the Inter School Shakespeare Drama Competition in 2011.
Hans Billimoria read the preface written by Oscar Wilde to his The Picture of Dorian Grey. Billimoria dressed in pink sarong and blue shirt read the preface on beauty- stating that art- which deals with beauty- should be for art’s own sake (and so the final conclusion- ‘all art is useless’). Vinodh, it seems, was an aesthete and felt that art need not be a pretty stocking to stuff in socio-political themes.
Michelle Herft- fellow guru- read the famous As You Like It soliloquy- “All the world’s a stage”- with its brilliant cameos of a man’s life in seven stages while Danu Innasithamby read a passage from author Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, the moving section where the blind young Helen first meets her teacher- where she compares herself to a ship in a dense fog wishing for light, finally being illuminated with the brilliance of love.
Vinodh- apparently- had enjoyed disappearing into Narnia when hard times came, and so the Thomians revived the 2006 production of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, starting with the scene where young Lucy Pevensie first steps out from the wardrobe into the magical world of Narnia and meets the faun Tumnus.
They also did two climactic scenes where the White Witch kills Aslan the Lion at the Stone Table and the war in Narnia between the good and the bad. They were however impromptu and one was left wishing for at least a lamp post in lieu of actors in school t’shirts sitting around.
The last theatrical skit for the evening- an uproarious rendition of Chekhov’s Death of a Government Clerk did the trick. The ludicrous but all too human tale of a clerk worrying literally to death over a sneeze at a theatre was a chance to unwind and laugh at our own obsequiousness and pomposities.
The evening ended with all the choirs together reminding us “the music’s always there with you”. When they stood to resounding applause, one imagined Vinodh there among them- taking his last, posthumous bow.