KAMALIKA PIERIS

In ‘Pin Eti Sarasavi Waramak Denne’, Sarachchandra described an incident he faced on the second or the third night at the Wendt. He was seated in the foyer while the play was in progress and all of a sudden a limousine came to a halt at the entrance and a well dressed woman walked in. She asked What is being staged here today?” and being told that it was a Sinhala play wanted to know when it was going to be over. When Sarachchandra told her that it would be over in two hours she was not prepared to believe him. What! A Sinhala play being over in two hours? I am sure it will go on till about 9 or 10PM”

Sarachchandra told her that he was pretty sure of the duration of the play and if she was keen to see it she could get in without any payment and leave whenever she wanted. The lady looked disdainfully at Sarachchandra and declared Shih! I don’t want to see these Sinhala plays. I only wanted to send my servant woman and she cannot be allowed to waste three four hours here” and walked away. [1]

One would have expected therefore that Maname’s   debut at the Lionel Wendt theatre in Colombo’s poshest district would also have been its last performance there.  But the opposite happened. ‘Wendt’ decided eventually   to accommodate   Sinhala plays and Maname   shows regularly there. Maname is a perennial at Lionel Wendt.   

Maname changed the attitude of the nation to Sinhala drama. D.C. Ranatunge wrote,   I bought a ticket for two rupees (given in a neat little envelope, both of which I still treasure after 58 years) [2] and was at the Lionel Wendt early that Saturday evening for the first show. To be exact it was Saturday, 3 November 1956. The hall was about half empty. I was among just a handful, possibly around 50 , attending.

Lights are switched off. A single spotlight falls on an actor who appears in a long garb, a ‘talappawa’ and a beard in a corner of the unlit stage. He starts a chant ‘sakala brahma suranaramastakayehi…’ the traditional appeal to the gods for the success of a new venture. He is the ‘pothe guru’, the narrator who acts as the link in relating the story of what the audience was going to see.  It was a totally new experience.

The Sinhala press did not show much enthusiasm. They were basically anti-university and biased against Sarachchandra. The Dinamina Editor, M.A. de Silva, thought otherwise. He invited his university friend Charles Abeysekera, a CCS (Ceylon Civil Service) high ranking official in the public service to review the play. Regi Siriwardena, Features Editor of the Daily News, reviewed it for his paper. Both reviews changed the initial response and Maname began to attract crowds, said Ranatunga.

Maname never looked back after that first show. Crowds flocked to see the play. It has   been regularly performed in  the past   seventy years to  enthusiastic audiences. Maname has played to  several generations  and held  hundreds of performances, since 1956. [3] It  was   in demand all over the island.   What  began as an experiment came to be a resounding success, observed  KNO Dharmadasa.

Maname was  highly regarded artistically. This is well known and much emphasized. What is not emphasized, but taken for granted is the fact that the  Sinhala play-going public, who   wanted quality entertainment,  also took an immediate  liking to Maname. Maname became a hit.

Maname’s appeal,  was not, I think,   limited to its  lovely songs, but also  to the complex story, with its  theme of  conflicting loyalties and  sexual attraction. There was deep emotion  and the audience liked that. Also the  way  the story unfolded. If the story had not appealed to the public,the play would have disappeared and the songs  alone would have survived, as part of the popular  song repertoire.

Maname  appealed to the rural segment , not only the urban. When Maname was shown  in the University at Peradeniya , in its ‘wala’  in 1958, people from nearby villages,   Hindagala and  Mahakanda came, sat with the undergrads and watched the show. Sarachchandra was very happy about this, said Amunugama. [4]

The Maname songs have now become   a  part of our Sinhala culture. They are ours, not just Maname’s. Ranjini Obeyesekera recalls, years later when  I was teaching at the Peradeniya University, I remember attending again a performance of Maname. 

 It was at the open air theatre, grass tiered seating under towering Tabibuia trees that shed their delicate pink blossoms on a packed audience of students, teachers, monks, government bureaucrats, workers, and villagers from the surrounding area. Then, in the scene where the lovers walk in the forest and the now familiar song ‘prēmeyen maṇa ranjita vey’ was being sung, a student voice spontaneously joined in, and instantly the entire audience burst into the song.  It was an unforgettable magical moment.

When the cast were still studying at University ,the play was performed  exclusively by the original cast. Shyamon Jayasinghe recalled,  our focus was on the enjoyment we derived when we got on to the “Maname bus” and toured the island. There was Trilicia, Edmund, Ben, Lionel, Nanda , Trixie, Indrani, Ramya, Pastor, Adikaram, Edirie  Arthur, KDP, Wimal and the host of other jolly persons doing the trek. [5]

We were often played out by the organizers who told us that it was a loss, when  it was full house! That  did not matter. Shyamon said he sang  during  his full stay at University. And also performed sporadically after that.  He must have performed his role about 300 times.

But Maname did not result in a spate of similar plays. The only play I can recall which  came after  Maname was Galapaththy’s Sanda   kinduru. There was a third play also but I cannot recall its name. I do not consider this surprising.

In my view, this type of theater demanded  a versatility which most aspiring dramatists simply could not muster. The writer  had  to be good, very good, at music, lyrics, movement as well as  dialogue and plot.  This was too much for the average playwright.

Sarachchandra however, had another explanation. Sarachchandra said, I expected that Maname would be followed by several plays in the same style and that before long we would possess a body of plays that would reflect our national genius like the Kabuki and Noh of the Japanese or the Beijing opera of the Chinese. But the social pressures began to bear on the playwrights and the demand for the theatre to have relevance to the day to day problems that people were facing became strong.  Since stylized drama could not deal with such problems , the theatre has gone to the naturalistic mode, and is today largely a theatre of protest, critical of the establishment”. [6]( CONTINUED)

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[1] KNO Dharmadasa,  Island, 4 and 5 June 2013

Maname in Retrospect: Homage to the Pioneers of 1956

[2] https://www.ft.lk/ft-lite/in-sinhala-at-the-wendt/6-365259

[3] Ranjini Obeysekera https://thuppahis.com/2014/06/10/ediriweera-sarachchandra-a-renaisance-man/

[4] Sarath amunugama Maname mathak vee p .116

[5] https://www.sundaytimes.lk/990509/plus5.html

[6] https://www.sundaytimes.lk/161113/plus/that-unforgettable-maname-moment-216433.html