Trinity College participated in the 46th Annual Inter-School Shakespeare Drama Competition organized by Colombo YMCA and Rotary Club of Colombo North.
The actors got through to the finals after they surprised the entire crowd on the 18th of September at the semi-finals of the competition. They showed the entire auditorium that Shakespeare’s work could be interpreted very creatively.
Trinity faced off against Ananda College, St Joseph’s College and Wesley College in the Boys’ Schools Finals on the 29th of September at the Bishop’s College Auditorium.
Trinity was the only school outside of Colombo in the finals, which was quite an achievement in itself.
The finals commenced at around 6:30pm with St Joseph’s performing an excerpt from ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’. The next performance was from Ananda College with ‘Richard III’. Next, Wesley College’s choice of the romantic comedy ‘Twelfth Night’ entertained the crowd.
The final performance of the night was the eagerly awaited performance of the tragedy ‘Romeo and Juliet’ from Trinity. Many wanted to witness this performance as they did not use costumes or props (apart from an umbrella!) on stage. The young actors from Kandy kept the crowd entertained with their creativity as well as the acting , which was full of intensity. Witty jokes kept the audience laughing through a few scenes, and a couple of tense scenes balanced the emotions of the crowd well.
The team was absolutely happy with their performance as they knew they had not left anything on stage and given it their all.
Few moments later the casts and crews of all four schools took their places in the auditorium as everyone eagerly awaited the results.
Trinity bagged the first award of the night for the ‘Best Stage Craft’. The Trinitians had won the same award at the semi-finals as well. Then the most prestigious individual award,
Best Actor: Niven Nanayakkara for his role as ‘Cleopatra’ (St Joseph’s College)
Then came the results that everyone was waiting for. A few weeks of strenuous but fun-filled preparation from Trinity College came down to this moment. The winners of the next set of awards were as follows,
Winners: Trinity College, Kandy
Runners-up: Ananda College, Colombo
3rd place – St Joseph’s College, Colombo
4th Place – Wesley College, Colombo
The Trinitians were in absolute shock as they had pulled off what seemed impossible when they started practising for this competition. They only started practices during the second week of September, and they had to make do without proper costumes. But they took advantage of it and came up with a very creative solution. The team managed to complete the drama with arguably the lowest budget ever used for a school Shakespeare production, performing in school uniform and used only one prop!
This shows how talented this current group of boys are, managing to win the competition after 15 long years. When they last won in 2004, the director of the current production, Mr Aslam Marikar was awarded Best Actor for his role as ‘Hamlet’.
Looking back at recent history, Trinity drama re-emerged in to the spotlight in 2017 when the Trinitians performed a very good production of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ which won awards in Kandy. Then, in 2018, a full length production, ‘The Secret Case of Sherlock Holmes’ caught the eye of many theatre loving Sri Lankans. These performances and productions paved the way to this memorable victory.
Cast and crew
The cast and crew of this production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ were as follows, (in order of appearance):
Kavan Ranaraja – Romeo
Harshith Karunarathne – Juliet
Jeremy Kottage – Servant
Abidh Jameel – Sampson
Lolonyo Soosaipillai – Gregory
Kevin Tennakoon – Abraham
Nikila Amarasena – Benvolio
Chathwara Weerasinghe – Tybalt
Sachika Boyagoda – Capulet
Thithira Jayakody – Lady Capulet
Ashok Mohan – Montague
Yadesh Mohandas – Lady Monatague
Isuru Ranathunge – Prince
Sherwain Wavita – Paris
Rahul Jayasinghe – Nurse
Dan Bartholomeuz
Muhammed Zaffarullah
Dillon de Silva
Jason Navarathne
Mr Aslam Marikar – Director
Mr Bandhuka Premawardena – Director
Mrs. Sumedha Weerawardena – Teacher in Charge
What everyone had to say
Kavan Ranaraja, a member of the cast:
What I think is this shows is the dedication of the team and the raw talent that we have at Trinity. We have a crew of all ages and levels of experience, but every one of them put in hard work and gave it their all, and it paid off this year.
A student from from the audience:
The victory of this drama reveals pure talent of all those involved as it strips away the usual glamour of props and showcases the talent on stage.
A message from a parent:
A solemn bow of admiration to a challenge undertaken, and executed with success.
Chief Guest, Mr Jerome de Silva said to the victorious boys:
I am so proud guys. You’ll definitely proved a point that Shakespeare doesn’t really need big props and costumes and that GOOD acting and understanding the lines is the key. I absolutely enjoyed your performance.
The Trinity College Dramatists would like to thank everyone who made this achievement possible. They hope to continue their high standards and go from strength to strength in the future.
