25 February 2020 12:05 am Views - 848
Nuwan Nawayanjith Kumara once identified the five pioneers of 20th century Sinhala drama: Ediriweera Sarachchandra, Gunasena Galappatty, Sugathapala de Silva, Henry Jayasena, and Dayananda Gunawardena. What set these luminaries apart from their contemporaries, peers, and students was the fact that they set the stage, literally, for the latter to take root. The rise of a Sinhala and bilingual middle class, particularly after 1956, took the theatre away from the confines of Dramsoc and Shakespeare and living room comedies on the one hand and of the hybrid nurti-nadagam on the other. These men studied Western drama and set their minds on not merely translating and adapting, but also transcribing foreign texts to the local cultural environment. If an essay like Bakmaha Akuna seems rooted in its setting and, despite those incongruous props and costumes, Hunuwataye Kathawa seems inextricably and impenetrably ours, it’s because these writers were immune from the mania to adapt and translate so facilely that makes up much of what goes for Sinhala drama today.
The rise of a Sinhala and bilingual middle class, particularly after 1956, took the theatre away from the confines of Dramsoc and Shakespeare
Sumana Aloka Bandara was one of these second generation theatre pioneers, in my view the most forgotten among them. A contemporary of not only Premaranjith and Karunaratne, but also Simon Nawagaththegama – who emerged yet another decade later in altogether different political circumstances – his reputation today lies in having introduced, if not bolstered, the careers of several actors who’d take to the cinema thereafter.
He was born on October 31, 1940 in Diullegoda near Nikaweratiya and obtained his primary education at the Diullegoda Government School. Later, he was transferred to Vijayaba Maha Vidyalaya in Nikaweratiya, where he met Simon Nawagaththegama. Apparently Simon had been quite a character: “he was almost always mulling over a book, almost always writing,” and while the school hadn’t boasted of exceptional facilities “it empowered us to explore our interests.” Against this backdrop, Bandara and Nawagaththegama ended up becoming great friends: “I sincerely believe that, to his dying day, I was the only childhood friend he kept in touch with.” Surprisingly for Nawagaththegama however, “he never took part, neither was he called to participate, in the plays we were taken into.” Bandara remembers two of those plays in particular: Sarachchandra’s Pabavati and a radio drama called Alokaya.
“It was a heady time for playwrights. Pabavati, as you know, established Sarachchandra. The English critics began to notice him. I won’t say I was a big theatre fan but these things did not escape us. On the other hand, from day one we were exposed to the big screen.” Of the films he watched, he remembers “the Tamil ones the most, since they were frequently screened: M. G. Ramachandran and Anjali Devi were particular favourites with us.” No doubt these lighted a fire in Bandara’s soul, “to go beyond my hometown, to Colombo if possible.”
In 1961, Bandara did just that. Hired as a clerk at the Civil Aviation Department, he soon got to know people who had links with the theatre scene in the capital. “We watched as many films as we could, given that there was hardly anything else we could do in our free time, but more importantly we developed and nurtured an intense passion for drama.” Sooner or later these lovers of the theatre would get their shot at writing and producing their own plays, and the opportunity came through their workplace. “I was a member of the Government Clerical Services Union. We were tasked with the responsibility of getting funds. One way we did that was by organising a drama festival. Through this I met a man called Dharmadasa Jayaweera. He mooted to us the idea of staging our own play. That’s how we formed our troupe. We called ourselves the S Thuna Kandayama, after the first initial of the names of the founders: S. Aloka Bandara, S. Dharmadasa Jayaweera, S. Karunatilake.” Sugathapala had formed Ape Kattiya and Premaranjith Tilakaratne had formed 63 Kandayama. S Thuna, while all this was going on, in 1965 came up with, as their first production, Akal Wessa.
Sumana Aloka Bandara was one of these second generation theatre pioneers, in my view the most forgotten among them
Akal Wessa, Bandara remembers, “had three characters: A woman, her husband, and a man that woman falls in love with outside her marriage. The plot was based on a short story called ‘Trikonaya’ by Daya Ranatunga, from his anthology Thuththiri. Dharmadasa played the role of the man and I took up the character of the husband, but we had an issue with finding a girl to play the wife.” They had, it seems, approached every leading thespian: “We went to Prema Ganegoda, Chandra Kaluarachchi, Leoni Kothalawala. Being newcomers, we couldn’t make much of an impression on them. We obviously had to fall back on a newcomer.”
Fortunately for Bandara, a friend of his from school working at the Treasury Department, by name Ekanayake, living in Wedamulla, a suburb in Kelaniya, was good friends with a family one of whose daughters, it seemed, had taken part in several school based productions and won beauty contests in the area. “He suggested her for the role and we went around inquiring whether she’d like to take part. Her father was hell-bent against the idea. Eventually, she got permission, and came down and played the wife’s character to perfection.”
The play, surprisingly given its subject, became a phenomenal success: “It ran on for more than 10 shows.” Sumitra Peries, talking to me about that period, remembered Akal Wessa as “revolving around quite an interesting theme, and becoming very popular among mainstream audiences.” Tissa Liyanasuriya, who, like Sumitra and her husband Lester, went to see every play he could, had gone to watch it with three acquaintances, including Sisira Senaratne and Joe Abeywickrema: “Were it not for a problem that cropped up regarding the authorship of the text, it would have become one of the most successful plays of its kind.” Liyanasuriya, of course, remembered Akal Wessa for another reason: “the girl who played the wife’s role won Best Actress at the State Drama Festival, and we selected her for our next film.” That girl, incidentally, was Malini Fonseka, the film Punchi Baba. So much of an impression had she created in the minds of those who observed her that two other directors vied to take her in: G. D. L. Perera with Dahasak Sithuvili, and Lester James Peries with Akkara Paha. “Lester slotted her in as the protagonist’s sweetheart, and later cast her as his sister,” Sumitra recalled.
Akal Wessa was followed by three productions: Nidikumba (1967), Api Kawda (1969), and Kiri Kandulu (1972). With Nidikumba – which featured Nita Fernando, who had just entered the cinema – Bandara made yet another contribution to the theatre: While it was far from the first absurd Sinhala play, it was with that that a Sinhala word for Absurd theatre was coined: “Vikara Rupa.” The term was Bandara’s. Api Kawda was an exploration of rebirth against the backdrop of marriage life, while Kiri Kandulu delved into unemployment, uncertainty, and the transcendental love of a mother. By then a new dramatic form had entered, and the era of Jayasena, Gunawardena, and Sarachchandra, while not completely over, had to yield to that of Nawagaththegama, Hemasiri Liyanage and Dharmasiri Bandaranayake.
Amidst all this, as Bandara put it, “we faced the vagaries of life as they came to us: Periods of intense poverty, joblessness, and uncertainty. I took to writing novels and autobiographies. Sumana Mathaka and Patirikka, my memoirs, were published not too long ago. As for drama, I just couldn’t return to it. Times had changed, I had a family to manage, and besides we were not in the 1960s, when it was possible to experiment in theatre. We couldn’t afford it.” If this sounds disconcerting, consider that Premaranjith Tilakaratne, talking to me about why he let go of theatre, cited the same reason. And if his most enduring contribution to the theatre had been introducing Malini, this does not, and should not, belittle Bandara’s other work, and the lengths he went to stage them despite all obstacles. “It was a different time,” he smiles at me, bringing our conversation to an end, “a sonduru kalayak.”
With input from Chathura Bandara and Vinod Moonesinghe
Photos by Manusha Lakshan