Kolamba Kamatha Fest to platform 22 tri-lingual plays within ‘Theatre Village’ this March

Former President, theatre enthusiast, and patron Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, festival curator and actress Bimsara Premaratna, and festival director Chanchala Gunewardena are uniting their passions and experiences in the arts to bring to life the first edition of the Kolamba Kamatha Festival, a trilingual festival of Sri Lankan theatre, running 27-30 March at the Kolamba Kamatha, BMICH. 

We sat down for a behind-the-scenes exclusive.

Q: Madam CBK, starting on a reflective note – your involvement and contributions to the arts have spanned decades, from your own artistic forays, to leadership roles and personal support for the creative community. How have these experiences shaped your understanding of the transformative power of the arts and commitment to support?

My passion for the arts started when I was young. First, via reading – for my father was a person who read voraciously and the three of us, the siblings, would get pocket money once a week to go buy books. So I got into reading from the age of about 6. By the time I was about 11 or 12 I had stopped reading romantic love stories like my friends did, and went on to Tolstoy, Pushkin and Dostoyevsky. I didn’t understand half of it but I read it all the same because I enjoyed it and I thought it was the done thing. Even after a very tiring day I noted my father would read a little before falling asleep.

Then, when I was about 10/11, my father made me join a Kandyan dance class and I loved it. I used to go once a week and then more regularly. I took part in ballets, some of the first ballets ever in 56-57 because the Kandyan dance did not exist in ballet form. Chitrasena did Karadiya, and then we did Spirit of the Mahaweli, and then many other ballets. I also played the piano and did those exams. The only thing I didn’t do was sing – because I couldn’t sing. I would sing completely flat.

I loved acting! Our school had a practice of having plays and operas and I always played the main or second main male role – I suppose because I was one of the tallest girls in the school at that time and also I had a ‘masculine’ voice. 

So acting, dancing, reading – no singing - and music. And I would credit the development of that most definitely to my parents. My mother used to play the piano and sing too. 

From there, when I started getting interested in politics and political science, having read about the experiences of other countries, I realised how important the arts was for changing, and transforming society. Especially Latin America. When I was coming into my teens and adulthood, Latin America was full of revolutions, rebellions and the overthrow of dictators and military governments. Left-leaning governments came into power, and artists played an essential role in those changes so I always realised how important art was. And of course, I had the privilege of living in the main homeland of the arts – in Paris – and there I learned to appreciate the arts even more. As students, sometimes we would skip a meal to collect that money towards theatre, for ballet, and the like. And, of course I also loved the cinema and finally ended up marrying a cinema actor. 

So that was how it was. I am convinced that the arts, when practiced properly, can play a very important role in transforming society.

Q: You’re known to be an avid theatre fan and have attended many Sri Lankan and international plays. How do you feel the potential is for Sri Lankan theatre on the global stage? Could you share your vision behind creating such spaces for the arts in Sri Lanka? Can Sri Lanka really be home to your dream of an Edinburgh Festival-like, vibrant theatre village? 

In France, and then in Sri Lanka, I used to go to many plays. When I started working, I would come home after work to change and run to Lumbini theatre because it was the place at that time where the good plays would happen. There were very few theatres in Colombo then for Sinhala language plays. The Lionel Wendt was too expensive I think. And I always had this dream to do something to promote not just the love of theatre, but also the participation in theatre – in producing theatre, in writing plays – amongst young people. 

I remember when I was in the Land Reforms Commission, we had 250 cooperative/collective youth farms all over the country and we started a theatre festival (my idea!), which we had two or three years running, where we asked the young people working in the Janawasa (cooperatives farms), to write their own plays. Most were O/L or A/L qualified, and we had a few young graduates too. They were young people tilling the land but the land that belonged to them and they earned from. We gave them some topics on which to write a 20-minute play. Costumes weren’t required, and we organised the plays in various coconut estates. They were brilliant! 

We used to have thre stages where people could play, and three plays were going on at the same time. Sometimes plays and kavi, and we chose the winners (judges of senior theatre dramatists) and this was very popular. And I realised at that time, that these young people who had no serious theatre training except in school – luckily at that time they were taught about theatre in school – that they produced excellent short plays!

So I saw first-hand that in the villages a lot of young people had talent, and I always had a dream that I would have a Drama Academy. When I became Chief Minister of the Western Province, I mooted the idea to build one. And when I got kicked upstairs to the Presidency, I gave money from the President’s Fund – we put in 50% and the Provincial Council put in the rest – to build it. But after the next Government came, the Academy’s rooms (built as accommodation for theatre actors) were turned into a commercial venture. I even had a committee of 38 of SL’s top dramatists craft a curriculum for the Academy but it was all thrown out. I tried to do this again with the Nelum Pokuna (mine was designed differently), but the idea was completely corrupted by my successor. So both my efforts were foiled, and the Kamatha is a result of that. 

We (at the Kamatha) don’t have an Academy but I knew people needed a place to practice, workshop, and teach. And now we are going into the drama festival with the same objective of promoting Sri Lankan drama in all three languages.

And yes, I think Sri Lanka can be home to a vibrant theatre village like the Fringe. The successes of my small experiments have shown that to me. So let’s all get together and make that dream a reality.

Q: The Kolamba Kamatha Festival is set to be a tri-lingual event. How important is it to promote inclusivity and unity through such cultural festivals in Sri Lanka’s current socio-political climate? 

 I think it is crucial. As someone who has done a lot of work in promoting unity and harmony amongst the different communities of Sri Lanka, and very successfully through our programmes, theatre has been a big part of it. Obviously, we must tie it up – not just platform drama, but also facilitate workshops to create deeper awareness of appreciating unity and beauty of diversity. This would be the immediate next step after the festival.

Q: Bimsara, as curator, how did you approach designing the festival’s robust program?

 When the opportunity came my way to don the hat of Curator for the Kolamba Kamatha Festival, I instinctively knew what kind of program we should aspire to create. Sri Lanka has a rich culture of theatre; as such, creating a program that celebrated the diversity of available plays (a vast array of genres, both in full-length and short formats, modern and classical masterpieces, original work and adaptations, thought-provoking experimental pieces, in all three languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English), while providing access and visibility to both seminal work and rising talent – this was the challenge I was faced with. There are so many plays we are so excited to highlight, and plenty we hope to do in the years ahead because this is just the start!

The program combines three components: firstly, a celebration of Sri Lankan theatre through a showcase of plays; and second, empowering rising talent by providing insights and tools through workshops, masterclasses and panels; and, thirdly, a festival market of arts, crafts, and activities, providing a view of the world of theatre for the general public/non-theatre person. There is something for everyone! 

Q: What challenges have you encountered in organising a tri-lingual festival, and how have you tried to address them to ensure a cohesive first-year program?

I see theatre as the synergy of three elements: space, energy, and people. When an artist is performing to a live audience, this synergy transpires, and there’s something magical about it. And the audience, once they have experienced it, will leave the space taking away some of that magical energy with them, feeling a connection and a sense of community. And that to me is the power of theatre. 

The theatre community in Sri Lanka remains divided by language barriers. While there are occasional overlaps – in the work itself, a few practitioners who work in multiple languages, and some cross-community audiences and dialogues – these instances are rare. This dynamic mirrors the way these communities live within society. The festival program presents a combination of plays in all three languages, while the workshops and panels will also provide language options where possible. What’s wonderful about theatre is that words and language are only as I said before, are one component and the plays showcased are enjoyable even without the ability to understand the dialogue in full. 

Q: Chanchala, having previously founded and directed the Matara Festival for the Arts (MFA), what lessons have you brought to your role as Festival Director for the Kolamba Kamatha Festival (KKF)?

First-time festivals come with a big creative opportunity for us on the planning end and that’s always exciting. We are setting the early groundwork of the goals that this event could aspire to, and I think one thing I carried in from Matara, and where Madam and our whole team is aligned, is we wanted this to be as welcoming and inclusive as we could – that is something we have considered from the programme, to the tickets, to the way we hope you will experience the space. 

I will also have to say the others I met through the process of MFA have been a big asset – I contacted both Giselle of GLF and Sonali of Samula who’ve both been generous with contacts and insight. We are working with Good Market who was also a partner in Matara, and I know this wider community now, of great creative doers – KALA, Music Matters, GLX, Ngage, production teams, designers, etc. – who I learn from and feel I can reach to.

What KKF has that I couldn’t have dreamed of for Matara last year, is purpose built infrastructure and the backing of an immensely experienced BMICH team, and this is magnified by Madam’s all in commitment. That made saying yes on a fast turnaround (4.5 months to execute) doable. Therefore, I could freak out less on admin and chat to Bims on what we could do to also try and use this opportunity to strengthen and grow theatre beyond platforming shows. Being able to say let’s add in panels that will try answer the concerns of youth practitioners who want to follow their passion and build a livelihood means a lot to us. I’ve been around creatives since I was a kid, and it’s a capacity so in need but too often undervalued. I think it was important for us to have the festival lay the foundation of sharing pragmatic tools that strengthen and grow this community.

Q: Any key takeaways you would like your audience to have – why should they not miss this?

We value and learn from the other brilliant theatre festivals already in action in Sri Lanka. Where we are attempting to build and innovate on their work is by going for these full days of multiple, at times overlapping, shows and panels for different ages – which is a more complex schedule than the norm. The audience will have to make some choices, but I this programme will make them curious to follow-up on the ones they miss, allowing more forward demand to build.

We also think the space, our Kolamba Kamatha theatre village, and its arts and crafts market space, brings something special to the table. We want you to attend and not only view theatre, but be in the centre of its atmosphere and action. We encourage everyone who attends any of the festival’s components, to bring a picnic blanket along and order some food and drinks, and consider spending the day lounging within the Kamatha, within the energy and the drama of theatrical life, and just life, unfolding.