Diminishing legacy of Dr. Sarathchandara and arrival of the ‘outsiders’
August 24, 2012, 7:38 pm
by Ariyawansa Ranaweera
The cultural and social
upheaval of 1956 was not something that occurred all of a sudden. Their
genesis could be traced to the struggle for independence, Anagarika
Dharmapala’s crusade for national revival. But that year was a
watershed in that the long suppressed emotions of the people on
politics, social and cultural spheres exploded
The natural
outcome of this phenomenon is that the arts and crafts of the country
were also suffused with tremendous enthusiasm. Drama was one such area
where this impact was strongly felt.
The era of the Nurti
and Nadagam was on the wane not only because creative minds behind
those productions had disappeared by then, but also because the newly
emerging intelligentsia were asking for an entirely different kind of
entertainment. The song-and-dance performances with very weak story
lines were getting stale and moribund.
The new audience
with bilingual capabilities was looking forward to a new kind of drama
where entertainment was to culminate in edification. The first batch of
indigenous language products entered the universities in 1960. Higher
education syllabuses accommodated texts to delve into theatrical
aspects of drama. Nadagam and Nurti mainly catered to the urban workers
and the nascent merchant class. But the taste of the new audience was
classical and refined rather than overtly popular. It was this need
that was catered to by Dr. Sarachchandra's brilliant products such as
Maname and Sinhabahu. They were well received in all parts of the
country and have left an indelible land mark on the Sinhala drama
tradition.
But, we have to pause here and ask ourselves a
very pertinent question regarding the future of Sri Lankan drama. Was
there anyone among the contemporaries of Dr. Sarachchandra or others
who could build on his style of drama? Sadly, the answer is an emphatic
‘No’. Those who tried their hand at producing dramas a la Dr. S failed.
The songs, the steps, the music of Dr. S’ dramas were only the outer
layers which, no doubt, contributed immensely to the overall effects of
his plays. But in each and every play of Dr. S, be it a tragedy, comedy
or a satire, there was an inner substance, a holistic message about
human nature that was highly important. It was this dramatic kernel
that the imitators of Dr. S. have failed to grasp.
Maname
is more than an interesting narrative with glamourous scenes and tragic
movements; it is a complex study of the feminine mind in a milieu of
male domination. Sinhabahu emanates a myriad strange of emotions which
have been discussed at length. Take one of his later dramas.
Swarnahansa is a study of the rapacious market forces which propelled
by greed subjugates all human relations to filthy lucre. In fact, this
drama is an extension of that book ‘Darmishta Samajaya’ which sent
jitters through the new advocates of open economic in 1977.
Here
is an interesting aside. The 1966 batch at the University of
Peradeniya, recently organised a public show, Hanthana Nimnada, to
honour Dr. S. and the other dramatists spawned by him. To their utter
surprise they discovered that Peradeniya University had not produced a
single dramatist after 1978. The fountain seems to have run dry.
What
were the reasons for the inability of other dramatist to build on the
edifice created by Dr.S? I think one main reason is the sheer genius of
the man. Here was a person who possessed a very sound educational
background which had been enriched both by the Eastern and Western
streams of knowledge. He was a philosopher well versed in both Buddhist
theory of perception and Bergsonian philosophy. He caught the sense of
the time with an ability to write, besides plays, the age in which he
lived in the Eliotic sense.
His knowledge in Sri Lankan
folk drama, folk lore and the myths was deep. He imbued the dramatic
styles of both the Sanskrit tradition and other oriental traditions. A
deep sense of music, dance and prosody enhanced his overall abilities.
All these skills helped him to write memorable drama scripts and make
them ‘dazzle’ on the stage.
Even if you observe the world
scene this situation is not unnatural. After all, man has been
producing dramas continuously form the era of Greek plays. But how many
world renowned play rights they have produced? Only a handful! Elymer
Maude, renowned a drama critic, in one of her essays has mentioned that
there have been only five world class dramatists. They are a three
Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, then Shakespeare and
in the modern era only Henrick Ibsen. One may not agree with her
totally, but the essential argument is clear. The dramatist with all
the necessary ingredients is a very rare product indeed! So is the case
with Dr.S. in Sri Lanka. No other Sri Lankan dramatist could reach that
high pedestal.
Unfortunately, dramatic style of Dr.S did
not become a live force, which could be studied by later generations.
Sarachchandra sought perfection. He experimented in the 1930s with the
realistic dramas of the day. Then he took to folk drama. Through Maname
and Sinhabahu he transcended the Nadagam style of drama. Premati Jayati
Soko was an attempt to forge an oriental Opera. He would have gathered
ample experience through this voyage. But as mentioned by Dr. M.
Fernando in his speech delivered at Peradeniya, on the 50th Anniversary
of Sinhabahu, Dr. S never committed such experiences to writing.
If
one looks at the Western drama scene, dramatist like Stainslawsky,
Meyarhold, Peter Brooks, Grotowski, Antonin Artaud, wrote down their
methods of acting and stage craft systematically for others to follow.
This did not happen as far as Dr. S was concerned. Was this another
reason that his successors could not pick up a thread form where Dr. S
left it.
It is in this setting that one has to examine the
role of the young ‘hot- heads ‘ led by Sugathapala de Silva. When they
entered the drama scene, Sinhala stage was all agog with ‘Manamania’
there was practically no room for any other form of drama.
A
book which inspired this group substantially was Colin Wilson’s ‘The
Outsider’. A land mark revelation where ‘nobodies’ form the society
became ‘somebodies’, adorning the fields of religion, politics and
arts. The most noteworthy feature of all these characters was that they
were the fore-runners who broke the stranglehold of feudal hegemony in
these fields during the 19th and 20th century in Europe. There was and
uncanny resemblance between these European characters and the
‘outsiders ‘ who championed a new thrust into the art world of Sri
Lanka in the 1950s. Some of them are Ralex Ranasinghe, Tony Ranasinghe,
Wickrama Bogoda, Prema Ranjith Thilakarathne, Benedict Dodampegama and
Cyril B. Perera. Majority of them did not have university education.
They all came form lower middle class background. They were a Bohemian
lot, for most of them did not have regular employment. But all of them
had one distinctive advantage. For, they were bilingual products. They
were highly attuned to new winds that were blowing across the Western
hemisphere.
Their focus was not only on drama but also all
avant-garde interventions that were taking place. They immersed
themselves in works of Satre, Camus, Andre Gide, Hemingway, Gertrude
Stein, a wave of films of Vitorio De Sica, Fedrico Felini, Ingmar
Bergson, Roaman Polansky, dance forms of Martha Graham, Isadora Dancan
and new poetry of French Symbolists, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. They
also admired the abstract art of Picasso, Kandinsky, Gaughan, and Van
Goh. In other words, they were fallowing faithfully all the activities
of the ‘’Lost Generation’’ of the 1930s.
Thus it is clear
that these new entrants were not a group of mere experimenters without
sound roots. They had the confidence and daring of their new found
intellectual grounding. They presented an alternative dramatic style
different form that of Dr. S. In fact there was a healthy competition
between these two genres in the 1960s.
There is another
extremely important fact that should be taken into account when
studying the impact on indigenous drama by these new comers. They were
not introducing the brand of realistic drama propounded by Ibsen,
Chekhov, Strindberg, and Bernard Shaw. The plays of these dramatists,
though revolutionary when they were first introduced, lacked novelty by
the 1960s. The drawing room, closet drama where picture perfect reality
and endless dialogues were found inadequate to grasp the facets of a
drastically change world.
The belief in man’s
perfectibility had been shattered especially by the onset of first and
second world wars. The underlying belief in the early realistic drama
was that in spite of all social ills that stalked the human beings, the
rational side of the man could overcome them if they were properly
guided. The two wars and the attendant miseries gave the lie to that
grand notion. The wars proved that intellect would not save the human
beings. They were inherently prone to animal passions, greed,
aggrandizement, torture and massacre.
This new ‘mental
frame’ gave rise to a more pessimistic view of human nature. Dadaism,
Anarchism, and Existentialism became the creeds of the post-war
generations.
Drama was also caught up in this transition.
The realistic drama which gave preference to the ‘human word ‘ was
found inadequate to articulate this new human condition. Dramatis were
in search of new modes of dramatic art. Three strands of drama emerged
eventually due to these efforts over time. Drama of the Absurd, whose
major proponents were Becket, Lonesco, the expressionists , whose ranks
were strengthened by dramatists like, Luigi Pirandello, Tennessee
Williams, John Osborne ( ‘’Of Look back in Anger’’fame) and, of course,
the epic drama championed by the Germans, Irvin Piscator and Bertolt
Brecht.
Although these three types of drama possessed their
individual characteristics, what is common to all three is that they
went beyond the orthodox realist drama towards a Surrealistic approach.
They called that a search for ‘’total theatre’. First introduced by
Antonin Artough the French Surrealistic playwright and rebel through
his ‘’Theatre of the Cruelty’ was an invocation of the total body
rather than only the mind of the spectator. For this they went back to
the early theatre of human beings in search of inspiration. Usage of
masks, dance steps, incantation, articulation of nonsense words,
enlargement of dramatic props were some of the ploys they used in their
dramas.
Martin Esslin in his land mark book, ‘’Theatre of
the Absurd’, has this to say on this development: "The theatre of the
absurd is a return to the old, even archaic traditions. It’s novelty
rise in its somewhat unusual combination of such antecedents and a very
survey of these will show that what may strike the unprepared spectator
as iconoclastic and incomprehensible innovation is in fact merely an
expansion , revaluation and development of procedures that are familiar
and completely acceptable in only slightly different contexts.’’
It
was these plays with more action and magic rather than ‘verbiage’ that
Sugathapala de Silva and his colleagues presented to the Sri Lankan
audience. In fact, all three types of new drama were produced by those
new comers.
Sugathapala de Silva in the introduction to his
‘Mara Sade’ translation attempts to articulate his approach to drama.
‘’Realism should not be narrowed down to superficial realism. One has
to go deeper and come close to Surrealism. This is an attempt by the
dramatists to grasp the subtleties of human behavior. Psychology enters
modern drama. Psycho analysis takes you to ritual and magic. There are
demons to be appeased and there should be Sharman’s to do this.
We
have a distinct advantage that was not there before the early
dramatists. World has become narrower and sources of knowledge are
readily accessible. We should not be afraid to be influenced by these
sublime dramas and dramaturgy at all. Those who run a way form salutary
influences confess their barrenness of their souls ‘’
And
unending array of these new dramas appeared on our stage, mainly as
translations and adaptations Attempts were made to produce original
dramas based on these principles though not with the same success.
Gradually these new dramas started wining prizes at the drama
festivals. Slowly and surely they gained ascendency on our stage,
replacing stylistic dramas introduced by Dr. Sarachchandra.
Courtesy: The Island
The title of Asoka Handagama’s beautiful film Ini Avan is a play on words. The
phrase “ini avan” means “him hereafter”, while the single word “iniavan” means “sweet,
good-natured man”.
How
challenging was it to the dramatist to inculcate the ‘experience of a
time gone by’ in a new generation? "I never expected the new cast to
ape the artistes of the original production including Jackson Anthony,
Kaushalya Fernando and Daya Alwis who played the roles of Henri, Lucie
and Clochet respectively. However, I strongly advocated the importance
of respecting the experience of history. Although Satre’s social fabric
was different to the trials of Lankan society, we can certainly find
common grounds in the philosophy in which the play was conceived. We
cannot close chapters of history as easily as closing files. If one is
pro-war, one cannot validate Trojan Women, similarly Men without
Shadows cannot be justified if you cannot identify with the concept,"
replies Bandaranayake.
