Thatta Gayikawa (The Bald Soprano) – A Review
Mild trepidation accompanied me to the Punchi Theatre the other night (29th July). A jaded palate with too much memory of stale theatrical tropes – the growing longing for the escape hatch…
Arts and Theatre
Art and Truth Telling: The Singularity of Truth
The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), and the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts (VAFA) exhibition of 14 artists from different parts of Sri Lanka imagining transitional justice which recently exhibited at the…
Screening of ‘Our Brand is Crisis’
The film ‘Our Brand is Crisis‘ is deeply resonant in Sri Lanka. How it deals with the party political fabric and culture, electioneering, the propaganda campaigns of candidates and their respective parties,…
SEARCHING FOR AN ELUSIVE ‘PEACE’: WOMEN IN TIMES OF TRANSITION
October 2015 marked fifteen years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. To celebrate this anniversary, FOKUS WOMEN launched a traveling exhibition and theatre performance…
Deadlier than the Male
Featured image courtesy Kentridgecommon I have just read Kishani Jayasinghe’s excellent article ‘My Experience of Independence’, published in The Sunday Times ‘Plus’ of March 6, 2016. In this, she expresses her perceptions…
Catharsis: How Jaffna is rebuilding itself using the arts
Since 2009, Jaffna has become host to hordes of curious tourists, visiting to see what a city ravaged by war looks like. For the residents, there are many bitter memories. It is…
The politics of musical taste, the inadequacy of good intentions, and not saying “no!” to racism
Featured image courtesy Bands in Town The timeless universal language, music? Not the way I see it… in fact, a musical experience is much more likely to reflect a particular time, place,…
Shrillness of Nonsensical Cultural Politics and the Social History of a Song
The latest news from Sri Lanka’s often bizarre domains of cultural politics is that Buddhism is under threat along with Sinhala culture. This however, is not due to the corrupt and violent…
Copies of Loss
cc: Ravi, Priya, fighters both, taken before their time. Three pictures hang in my study. (Not my study actually, contractually; the bank retains the mortgage. I do not write in, from a…
Red Lines documentary screening & discussion
invites you to a screening of the award winning documentary ‘Red Lines’ on Tuesday, 15th December 2015, from 5 – 7.30pm at the LKIRRSS auditorium, 24, Horton Place, Colombo 7. The screening…
In Absentia
My blast through screens of Walmart.Com has left no visible trace, name drained from the database, the retailer cutting losses, unwilling to keep stock, especially in the department of war poetry. about…
Recording: ‘Designing the future: Plotting change, planning reform’
The statement in September by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister provided a timely frame of reference to appreciate the ‘Corridors of Power’ exhibition. From the security guards at the venue of the exhibition to international…
Recording: ‘Drawing power: Framing the inconvenient, imagining the impossible’
The statement in September by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister provided a timely frame of reference to appreciate the ‘Corridors of Power’ exhibition. From the security guards at the venue of the exhibition to international…
Recording: ‘Framing discourse: Media, Power and Democracy’
The statement in September by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister provided a timely frame of reference to appreciate the ‘Corridors of Power’ exhibition. From the security guards at the venue of the exhibition to international…
Recording: ‘The ‘F’ word and the Tamil National Question’
The statement in September by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister provided a timely frame of reference to appreciate the ‘Corridors of Power’ exhibition. From the security guards at the venue of the exhibition to international…