Kolamba Hatha Presented by Apurwa Theatre Group

Kolamba Hatha is a devised performance featuring eight musicians, singers, and actors who invite the audience to imagine a pandal built through their own voices and bodies rather than lights and fabric. The performance is structured around three boxes: The Love Box, The Marriage Box, and The Struggle Box. Characters shift roles as stories repeat in new forms, with each perspective reshaping the truth.

In The Love Box, a school assembly faces disruption from a rejected student demanding justice, resulting in a confrontation between love and despair. The Marriage Box reinterprets the same characters within a story concerning forced unions, fractured relationships, and loneliness. The Struggle Box places these tensions into a larger political backdrop, where personal conflicts mirror social unrest, leading to violence, betrayal, and multiple tragic endings.

The production concludes with an evidence box featuring sixteen fragmented testimonies from friends, neighbors, and witnesses, each attributing the deaths to different causes. Audiences are invited to act as witnesses and move between characters with empathy.

Director

Dr. Chamika Hathlahawatta, director of the Apurwa Theatre Group, has produced short, full-length, children's, and school dramas since 1997. His productions have won awards at international stage drama festivals and been presented globally. He received the Bunka Award in 2019 and serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Director’s Note

Kolamba Hatha examines the fragility of human relationships through shifting roles, multiple perspectives, and layered narratives. The Love, Marriage, and Struggle boxes reflect the complexities of life where love, betrayal, power, and social pressures collide. By using bodies and voices to construct the pandal, the production connects personal stories with broader societal struggles, highlighting that truth is not singular and every witness carries memory and responsibility.

Group

The Apurwa Theatre Group has produced stage dramas for over 25 years and operates a drama school guided by its founder and director, Dr. Chamika Hathlahawatta. The group has earned recognition at the National Stage Drama Festival and represented Sri Lanka at international stage drama festivals.