Nissanka Dharmathilake - BMR 2008

“Kandak Vilila Kendak Veduwa Wage” is the only way I can describe the quality of the BMR 2008 (Sandakada Asna). Despite experiencing a lot of obstacles and unnecessary workloads, the technical team did a wonderful job in delivering the show and finishing it 20 minutes before midnight. I take my hat off to the members of the Tech Team.

Although we witnessed some individual brilliance from a few artists (e.g. Gaja Manu, Beri Sil and dance routine for Ran Pokunen etc.), most of the presented items were quite inferior. I don’t want to do an item by item analysis of all the items because it won’t serve any purpose. But I would like to highlight the following issues for your consideration:

1.    At the 1^st production group meeting we all agreed that the primary objective of the BMR 2008 should be presenting a high quality show which won’t run more than 3 ½ hours. Within a couple of weeks this objective was ripped into pieces by the decision makers by accommodating 58 out of 60 expressions of interests. This was the primary reason (among the many other reasons) for ended up in staging a poor quality show.

2.    Since 2005/06 period the SCF has been using certain guidelines for the selection of artists and participants. I’m 100% sure those guidelines were totally ignored by decision makers, causing a lot of practical problems in the items line-up.

3.    There was an unwarranted attempt to copy the basic framework of the BMR 2006 (Demansala Abiyasa). It simply shows that we didn’t learn anything from last year’s experience.

4.    As other people highlighted earlier, most of the dance routines and song items looked monotonous and lacked any depth. I believe it was result of using same old artists in a somewhat stale format.

5.    There wasn’t enough room for new thinking, especially presenting items appealing to our younger audience.

6.    Decision makers of the SCF should possess a bit of imagination to visualise the show from the audience’s point of view. Our loyal audience is the most important stakeholder in this endeavour. Further, we should be brave enough to take bold decisions. That is the only way to success. Trying to please everyone (mainly Sydney’s self appointed artists) will not lead to anything other that organised debacle. It was well proven beyond any doubt.