Hello!

Five SYE members — Mashi, Mithoda, Murthaaz, Sam, and Sasi — were cast in Stages' critically acclaimed play DCS 7 Decades of Sri Lanka in its September 2024 rerun, performing alongside some of the biggest names in Sri Lankan theatre.

Representing the SYE at an 'evening of community and art' event hosted by Stages at the Kolomba Kamatha in August, Samuel and Murthaaz unveiled the vision of our youth theatre group:

'THE FIRST YOUTH THEATRE GROUP TO STAGE A PLAY ON THE MOON'

Our SYE leader Samuel participated in the 'Uniting Asia' - Asian Youth Theatre Festival Artists' Residency Programme in Bali, Indonesia, in June 2024.

For him, these words perfectly captures the essence of his experience:

"Can we change the world? No, but we can change our worlds"

We commenced our 3rd Term in March 2024.

Stages' Patterns of our Genocides debuted at the 2nd World Conference on Statelessness held in Malaysia, with Murthaaz delivering a powerful performance as the lead, working with two other artists from Taylor's University.

'CRASH' is a play devised around creatively exploring different interpretations of its title word, while posing a singular question: “How much can things come crashing down for a guy in just one day?”

It was performed at the '3rd Bell Children's Theatre Festival' organized by Stages at the Sudarshi Institute of Sinhala Culture.

Six of our youth delegates traveled to Mumbai, India for Thespo 25, where they staged two original performances and conducted a reading of PING!

Two of our artists Murthaaz and Kithmi, participated in the 2023 ‘Asian Youth Theatre Festival’ in Iloilo City, Philippines as representatives of Stages (and Sri Lanka!).

They presented the #WATSS campaign and conducted our very own brand of workshops to an international audience.

A play devised for The CAAPP Project performed at the Independence Arcade. The play was a ‘show and tell’ about Period Poverty and the need to overcome by being Period Proud!

PING! is an original play by the Youth Ensemble of Stages Theatre Group, drawing from the real-life experiences of its teenage cast. The production addresses modern youth issues like digital dependence, mental health struggles, changing family dynamics, and the generation gap. This marks the Youth Ensemble's first production.

A social media-based campaign initiated in April 2023 that introspectively explores how the current challenges facing young people – economic and political instability, fragmentation of community and societal structures, existential anxiety, dependence on social-media and technology – all combine to erode a young person’s capacity to interact meaningfully with real-life relationships and situations. The campaign was researched, conceptualized and led by the youth ensemble.

This play stemmed from a writing exercise assigned by Ruwanthie to the youth ensemble for the purpose of creating a play. The exercise entailed the writing of a monologue, with each member being given the opening line " sadness is like...".