Description

Mata Erehiwa Mama was Kariyawasam’s first full-length theatre script and his second directorial attempt for the mainstream Sinhala stage. At the State Drama Festival 2001, it won 8 awards including Best Play of the Year, Best Direction, and Best Script Awards for the playwright himself. It also bagged awards for all three performers of the play as Best Actor for Saumya Liyanage, Best Actress for Chamila Peiris, and Best Supporting Actor for Gihan Fernando. Furthermore, it won the awards, Best Set for Pradeep Chandrasiri and Koralegedara Pushpakumara, as well as Best Lighting Design for Wasantha Kumara. The play Mata Erehiwa Mama is centred around a young civil servant – Jayaweera – who has recently been appointed to head a missing persons’ commission. Disappearances, unearthing of mass graves, the myriad different ways our ‘official’ activities pervade the more personal space of our lives and leave us enslaved to the system are some of the aspects discussed in the play. The books Mata Erehiwa Mama and its English translation (Me vs I) are accompanied by an introduction exploring the political context and background under which the play was written, the immediate influences of the playwright, an analysis the script and its characterization, and the staging of Mata Erehiwa Mama. Both books also include sketches of the stage set by Set Designers Pradeep Chandrasiri and Koralegedara Pushpakumara and colour photographs of the play, from pre-digital times, by Malaka Dewapriya and Gaya Nagahawatta.