All the world’s a stage for a Cambridge entrepreneur

Her
idea is that anyone can upload their performance to the website
without charge, get rated for their talent and be “discovered”
by the public, celebrities and talent scouts. StageYou.TV is a
platform for user-generated contests and will also cater to users who
want to simply perform as part of their self-expression without the
pressure of a competition.

Abeysekera
is passionate about this new venture, saying: “It
has truly been a roller coaster ride. Not long ago, I was a girl
paralysed by an idea, unable to speak to anyone about it. Now I’m a
girl on the brink of launching the website she has dreamt about for
four long years”.

Dr
Joanna Mills, programme director and deputy director of the Centre
for Entrepreneurial Learning, comments: “During the programme,
Deepamala developed StageYou.TV as her major enterprise project
taking it from the early seeds of an idea through to the real venture
you see today. Throughout the programme she demonstrated passion,
ambition and determination to succeed with this as her project and as
a result has made extremely significant progress”.

The
first contest is Theatre Fiesta on StageYou.TV
featuring theatre personalities from Sri Lanka as the online judges.
In order to participate, performers need to select any script from an
English play, film three minutes of them performing a monologue and
then sign up via the website at http://www.stageyou.tv/
to get the film uploaded. However, performers are encouraged to
upload their films even if they don’t wish to enter a specific
contest.