TrikonE
About Us
Founded by one of the country’s premier dramatists and film makers, Dharmasiri Bandaranayke, TrikonE Cultural Foundation celebrates its 24 years of existence. Apart from dedicating itself to the promotion of multiculturalism, the TrikonE provides a platform for creativity among the multi-ethnic heterogeneous population from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds and actively engages in promoting intercultural understanding.
Angle of Triangle
The TrikonE or the Triangle represents these three ideals; Drama, Cinema and other Cultural Areas as well as the three major ethnic identities; Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. It serves as a Centre where diverse traditions and cultures meet to flourish at one another’s expense. After the setting up of the TrikonE, “Trojan Women” was produced in the Sri Lankan theatre in 1999.
Cultural Diversity and Identity in the Arts
Our work has helped to overcome the isolation and separateness of different cultures that has arisen as a legacy of the war. Our policy is that the development of each culture is the development of all. This cuts across the tendencies of national and religious exclusivist tendencies in the field of art and culture. In this process, we have collaborated with the traditional and modern drama, dance groups, schools and young film makers to produce modern creations drawing upon the folk traditions.
”Defining Quality in the Arts”
We have collaborated with united cultural workers among communities in the island in re-establishing and preserving the drama traditions in the North and East of the island whose traditional communities have been threatened by social change, war and tsunami. In this work, it has helped to find the common roots of Sri Lankan traditional theatres, dance and folk-lore. It has created a space where the common people and artists, in their creative work, interact with other traditions. These traditions are an expression of the world’s cultural diversity which should be preserved.
Workshop Crossing boundaries Wider Landscapes
We have taken theatre, film, theatre education and dance-drama activities into inter-ethnic war torn areas as well as other rural and remote areas where people have no access to cultural activities. This has also provided a new dimension to the understanding of culture as a human right and to the question of coping up with global changes and disruption of national cultures. Our contributions have assisted united cultural development in multicultural Sri Lankan society. In this endeavor, we recognize that an international culture is developing as cultures and different traditions interact in an unprecedented manner.
Universalism and Relativism
Our Goals
To spread awareness of Art in the society.
To deliver value based education to children through the medium of Arts.
To undertake Art projects for challenged and under privileged children.
To organize Art Camps to propagate and further Art knowledge and culture.
Founder
Dharmasiri Bandaranayake is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the TrikonE Cultural Foundation. In the year 1999, Dharmasiri staged a Sinhala version of Euripides’ anti-war play, Trojan Women. In response, extremists bombed and burnt down the house of the principal actress, Anoja Weerasinghe; his music director Rukantha Gunathilaka and his wife were physically assaulted, with gasoline poured on them in a mock execution. Both had to flea the country, and further productions of Trojan Women were cancelled. As a response for those violence against them, that the Trikone Arts Centre was founded. Since the Centre’s inception, Anoja and Rukantha returned, and Trojan Women has been performed 59 times. The Centre has had many other accomplishments, as well: during the 2004 ceasefire, Dharmasiri became the first dramatist in thirty years to bring Sinhala drama to the Tamil-dominated North and East, and Tamil drama to Colombo and the Sinhala-dominated South. The Centre has put on multi-ethnic and anti-war films and arts festivals around the country. Our projects included translations of Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhala literatures into each other’s languages, and the creation of the first archive dedicated solely to the Sri Lankan Tamil arts. This is not work without consequences: Dharmasiri has received numerous death threats, and he has had to leave the country on three occasions.
Kala Suri Dharmasiri Bandaranayake (born 06th of October 1949) is a Sri Lankan film director and playwright. Bandaranyake’s debut Hansa Vilak in 1980 dealt with facets of a society at odds with itself. His other films like Thunveni Yamaya (1983), Suddilage Kathaawa (1984), Bawa Duka and Bawa Karma (1997) followed similar themes. Bawa Duka and Bawa Karma challenged the repressive dogma of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Common arcs in Bandaranayake’s films follow the conflicted lives of men and women, transformation of private lives into public affairs, the unpleasant reality of marriage and society and the dark side of human desire.
Dharmasiri Bandaranayake is an acclaimed dramatist. Eka Adhipathi, Makarakshaya, Dhawala Bheeshana, Yakshagamanaya and Trojan Kanthavo have all dealt with current issues of national and political importance. He is an artist who attempts to connect the sociopolitical environment with the civil society through art.