Trailblazers of Fine Arts...:

She belongs to a new generation of artistes

Face to Face by Ranga Chandrarathne

Jackson Anthony's venomous attack on Kaushalya's acting once condemned her as an actress who is willing to expose 'ugly nudity, and categorised her as one among a group of actors including Hemasiri Liyanage, W.Jayasiri, Mahendra Perera and Saumya Liyanage.

He also condemned this group's application of the media, as those films were not aesthetic creations, but creations based on delirious thoughts. It is surprising to hear a person who had worked with progressive directors like Dharmasiri Bandaranayake and the late Sugathapala de Silva making such petty and baseless remarks on serious and ground-braking creative work.

Career

Kaushalya did not want to comment on the adverse remarks. In her trailblazing career, she has acted in many stage dramas including 'Vikurti', 'Katandara Dekak' by her mother Somalatha Subasinghe, 'Punthila' a play directed by a Finnish theatre director and Sugathapala de Silva's 'Marat Sade' for which Kaushalya won Special Award of the Jury.

Among the stage plays she acted are Dharmasiri Bandaranaike's 'Dhawala Bheeshana' for which she won the best actress's award, Somalatha Subasinghe's 'Antigone', 'Dona Kathirina', 'Yadam' and 'Nambukara Vilasiniya'.

In most of these stage plays, Kaushalya won either Best Actress's Award or Best Supporting Actress's Award. For Asoka Handagama's 'Dunhida Addara' and 'Sanda Dadayama', Kaushalya won the Best Actress's Award and the Best Actress's Critic's Award. Handagama's 'Diyakata Pahana', Sudath Mahadiulwewe's 'Wanaspathi', Bertram Nihal's 'Isuru Gira' were some of the other teledramas she acted in.

The films in which Kaushalya has played lead/supporting roles are Asoka Handagama's "Sanda Dadayama" (Moon Hunt) and "Me Mage Sandai" (This is my Moon), Satyajith Maitipe's "Boradiya Pokuna" (Scent of the Lotus Pond) and Vimukthi Jayasundara's "Sulanga Enu Pinisa" (Foresaken Land).

Kaushalya's debut direction on stage, "Sanda Langa Maranaya" (Blood Wedding) won several awards, including the Best Play of the Year at the National Drama Festival 2005.

She is young, attractive but simple in demeanour. Unlike most of the actresses of her generation, she readily mingles with strangers. Dressed in plain attire with almost a bare neck, Kaushalya is very much ordinary in her real self. Instead of a heavily dolled-up countenance, she identified herself with a disarming simplicity that would make any estranger at home, with her.

She belongs to a new generation of artistes dedicated to explore the horizons of contemporary Sinhala films, drama and theatre. Perhaps, she is not one of the conformist stars in the distant murky sky, but one among the man on the streets. It is this genre of artistes who have embarked on an odyssey, redefining the conservative boundaries of the contemporary Sri Lankan Art and culture in an earnest effort to salvage it from the present quagmire of stagnation.

Nostalgic memories

Awakening her nostalgic memories of her schooldays at Sujatha Girls' School, Kaushalya says with a mischievous smile, that those two years were the most interesting years of her schooldays she spent under the American Principal Mrs. Clara Motwani.

The class consisted of only 20 students and the Management headed by the American Principal maintained a carefree and friendly atmosphere at the school, providing ample room for children to engage in a host of creative work.

As the class was small in number, the teacher knew each and every student, personally. It was here at Sujatha, hat Kaushalya learnt her alphabet of theatre work. When she was in grade four and five, she wrote script, donned costumes and produced dramas for the class.

However, this atmosphere changed when she was admitted to St. Paul's Girls' School. The change over from Sujatha to St. Paul's was her mother, Somalatha Subasingha's decision. Somalatha Subasinghe wanted her daughter to mix herself with students from diverse social strata. She thought that Sujatha had homogeneous students, exclusively from the upper middle-class and affluent families.

It was an entirely different atmosphere that Kaushalya encountered at St. Paul's. A class consisted of 40 students; most of them had passed the year five scholarship and it was a proverbial rat race. As there was little room for students' creativity at St. Paul's, Kaushalya took to athletics.

For a short stint, she engaged in the track-and-field events and trained herself under a coach. Following a minor accident, Kaushalya's athletic career came to a halt, prompting her to pursue her interests in drama and theatre.

Kaushalya stumbled upon a dilemma when she passed her O/Ls with flying colours, as the Principal insisted her to study bio-science, against her wishes. The principal went a step further by calling her mother Somalatha Subasinghe.

Following a short elucidation by Somalatha, it was decided that Kaushalya should further her academic pursuits in the Arts stream.

She read Sinhala, Sociology and English at the University.

It was also another coincidence that she was asked to teach at the Department of English by the Head of the Department, Prof. Siromi Fernando. When violence broke out in the university, she went to Gujarat for six months, receiving special training in Drama and Theatre.

From 1991 to 1999 she had been teaching at the University of Colombo. By the time, she was heavily involved in the local theatre, acting in Dharmasiri Bandaranaike's Dhawala Bheeshana and Sugathapala de Silva's Marasad. She observed that English was a problem for the students from rural areas.

It has still not been solved, and most of the graduates could not get employment largely due to the lack of the knowledge of English. She attributed that this was the rootcause for insurgency, and the students' involvement in it. Today's middle class think that English is the be all and the end all.

Reminiscences

She reminisces vibrantly the time her father spent in Jaffna, as the last Sinhala Government Agent (GA). Those days, she had been living in a rented house in Rajasinghe Mawatha, in Wellawatte. Shuttling between Wellawatte and Jaffna, and living with Muslims and Tamils, she didn't feel isolated or estranged at all, in mingling with them.

She remembers how her father Lionel Fernando attempted to build a cultural bridge between the North and the South. For the first time, a Sinhala film festival was held in various townships in the North and the East.

The State Dance Ensemble conducted by Mr. Makuloluwa, was brought to the North under Mr. Lionel Fernando's patronage, to shrink the prejudices. She also recalled that her father had made arrangements to create a market in Colombo for agricultural produce like onions, chilies etc. from the North.

This had a cushion-out effect on the Jaffna population that has been afflicting from social evils like castism. Unfortunately, this respite prevailed only for a short period. This oppressive milieu coupled with economic hardships compelled the youth to take to arms against the then establishment. The movement thus born later became a racial issue.

However, these plans were shoved off by the short-sighted politicians. Suddenly, the government called back her father to Colombo, closing that chapter.

She could still remember her grandmother's funeral that took place in Jaffna. It was the most elaborate funeral that Jaffna had ever witnessed. The road from the GA's residence to the cemetery was washed and carpeted with a layer of white sand.

A free trishaw service from the Jaffna railway station to their house was arranged by three-wheeler drivers, to fetch the crowd from Colombo. Kaushalya had to face violence in the Sri Lankan university system instigated by the students who were involved in the insurgency. Once, when insurgents were killed by an accidental blast, a hit-list was discovered, and on top of the list, were the names of her friends.

Recollections

Speaking about the happy evenings she spent with the artistes of the day, she recalled that, almost every evening was an assembly of artistes including Dharmasena Pathiraja, Daya Thennakoon, Piyasena Ahangama and Wimal Kumara de Costa who were boarded in her house, joined the interactive discussions.

Those were the generation of artistes who were with the people, and film makers like Dharmasena Pathiraja were considered as peoples' artistes with Marxist orientation. The atmosphere at her home was filled with discussions on Fine Arts and Culture.

Tissa Abeysekara, Dharmasena Pathiraja, Sugathapala de Silva, and Darmasiri Bandaranayake were her Gurus in the Theatre and Cinema, where she performed in plays directed by them. Asoka Handagama, Satyajith Maitipe, Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, were the artistes, besides her parents, who always served the progressive cause, and shaped her philosophy of life.

On the other hand, she enjoys immensely the hard-life she leads as an artiste of the common man, and the hardships that she underwent when works of art were taken to remote villages. The dramas were staged in remote schools without even the bare necessities.

She always yearned to be with the people, and was often reluctant to be identified with her screen characters. Kaushalya says that, so far, her acting on the silver screen had not been adversely criticised or looked down upon by viewers, albeit some cursory remarks made by the critics. It was only one actor, who heavily relied on his screen image, who had venomously attacked Kaushalya by name, in interviews that he had given to Sinhala newspapers.

Perhaps, this is due to his mean understanding of the medium, complete ignorance of diverse dictions of film (it is doubtful whether he would have considered it as a medium of cheap entertainment) or the sinister intention of nipping in the bud the talented actress's career, together with the novel tendency in film-making.