Lovable dictator of Sinhalese theatre

This week’s column is dedicated to the fond memory of Sugathapala de Silva, an epoch-making dramatist, novelist, translator, radio play producer and writer who was known as the ‘lovable dictator ‘of Sinhalese theatre. In doing so, I will quote from Ajith Samaranayake’s famous Sunday Essay on Sugathapala de Silva published on November 3, 2002.

Sugathapala de Silva (August 8, 1928-October 28, 2002) was born in Deduwala, Weligama (not Nawalapitiya as often stated) and received his primary education from Siddhartha Vidyalaya, Weligama. At the age of ten, he moved to live with his uncle in Nawalapitiya. He grew up in a multi ethnic community of Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. His childhood experiences influenced him to write novels such as ‘Ballo Bath Kathi’, ‘Ikbithi Siyalloma Sathutin Jeevathvuha’ and ‘Esewenam Minisune Me Asaw’. Commenting on his novel Ajith Samaranayake wrote that they “... were all peculiar political novels in their own ways. Here we see the agonies and ecstasies of a newly-arrived class, their gradual evolution into a national bourgeoisie and finally their bid to challenge and even dialogue the old comprador class. As a political novelist Sugath was no propagandist and was too subtle a writer to make overt political statements but all his work is shot through with his sense of immense humanism and his hope for a better society for the wretched of the Sri Lankan earth.”

Gifted translator

One of the important facets of Sugathapala de Silva’s role as translator was that his innate ability to grasp the gist of the original work and translate it into Sinhalese according to the norms and traditions of Sinhala language, thereby enriching the contemporary Sinhalese idiom. Being a truly a bi-lingual, Silva’s translations such as Marasadh the play/Marat/Sade), (Translation Godo Unnhehe Enakal (Translation play/Waiting for Godot), Harima badu hayak (Translation play/Six Characters in Search of an Author) and his last translation of Shyam Selvadurai’s ‘Funny Boy’ (Amutu Ilandariya) undoubtedly remain the best among Sinhalese translations.

His remarks on translations in the preface to Marat Sade shed light on some of the important aspects of translation; “I don’t believe that one can serve justice to the original work merely because one is fluent in both languages, particularly in translating drama from one language to another. It is extremely important (for the translator) to identify the delivery of dialogues and rendering of words in a drama on stage.

You don’t care

If foreign armies with whom

You are making secret deals

March in and massacre the people

Oba rahasgivisum gasaganna

Para hamuda pamina

Sanhara kalath janatava

Kamak ne obata

Here I have translated the world ‘Foreign’ not as ‘Videshiya’ but as ‘Para’ identifying the rhythm of language of the stage. In such a manner, I chose the language and in some places, I have condensed long passages in the original…..when reading some of the Sinhalese translations of foreign plays; I encounter only the translated words of complex theme of the drama. It is because of this that some of the great drama became weak production in Sinhalese theatre…”

Ajith Samaranayake wrote: “… But by the early 1960s the stylised form had spawned mindless imitators who had made a caricature of Sarachchandra’s mode. What is more, there was the feeling that the mode had exhausted itself and it was this new thinking which Sugath’s generation represented. This was a generation of bi-lingual youth either of urban origin or who had come to Colombo in search of the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. They were a middle class generation working in newspapers or the advertising industry.

“They were also excited by the new trends in English literature, drama and the cinema. Most of them were grouped round the ‘Sinhala Jathiya’ paper (published by Gilbert Perera of the Perera and Sons family) and the magazine ‘Dina Dina’ edited by Anandatissa de Alwis. The late Cyril B. Perera recalls in a tribute to Neil I. Perera how of a Sunday, Neil would somehow find the money to watch a film with a couple of friends to the accompaniment of a few bottles of beer, a packet of kaju and a packet of Bristol cigarettes! Basically outsiders to the Big City these young men would chase the sun down into the sea with their conversation which centred on bringing about an awakening in the arts.”

It was out of these conversations that the idea of forming ‘Apey Kattiya’ emerged. Established as a loose artistic grouping at the now extinct Indian Club in Kollupitiya. It took the Sinhala theatre by storm with such plays as ‘Boarding Karayo’ and ‘Thattu Geval.’ But it was not confined to drama alone. Sugath himself brought out several novels during this time such as ‘Asuru Nikaya’ and ‘Biththi Hathara’ later made into a film by Parakrama de Silva.

Sugath was no doubt inspired by dramatists such as Tennessee Williams and Luigi Pirandello and translating or adapting successively their plays such as ‘Cat On a Hot Tin Roof’ and ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’. However, he was a natural dramatist wishing to break through the mould of the proscenium arch. The technique he used at the time such as a character running up on stage through the audience were revolutionary for their times and was like a whirlwind blowing through the claustrophobic corridors of the Sinhala theatre as well as ossified middle-class manners and morals.

This was a personification of the aspirations, satisfactions and frustrations of a new urbanised generation which was burgeoning in the 1960s.

Ajith Samaranayake provides an insightful summary of Sugath and his generation. “But if in the 1960s Sugath expressed an existentialist sense of alienation, by the 1970s he had become a more overt politically inclined dramatist and writer.

By this I do not mean that he ever waved a party flag or fell victim to the wave of socialist realism which swept the arts sometimes in deference to the new United Front regime led by Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1970.

Sugath was too percipient a writer for that. In fact there is no other artist in Sri Lanka (With the exception perhaps of Gunadasa Kapuge) who has been so battered by the bludgeon of blind political power as Sugath.

However, Sugathapala de Silva never fell into the intellectual error of confusing personal political convictions (which he firmly held) with partisan party politics.

His best play will perhaps remain ‘Dunna Dunu Gamuwe’ which was made in the aftermath of the 1971 Insurrection. Although centred on a trade union struggle (which might have looked like small beer to the brave insurrectionists) it had an admixture of politics and art expertly mixed with technique and aided by some superb acting by the late U. Ariyawimal and W. Jayasiri was the precursor of the serious political theatre which followed at the end of the decade.”

In that sense Sugathapala de Silva will remain the one bridge which brought together the realistic theatre of the 1960s with the absurdist theatre of the 1970’s and the post-modernist theatre which followed. Whether it is Simon Navagaththegama, Parakrama Niriella, Dharmasiri Bandaranayake or the latest star Rajitha Dissanayake all of them owe their origins to Sugath. Some may have followed his politics and others his techniques and some a mixture of both but the debt is beyond doubt and will certainly not be challenged.”

In retrospect, the importance of dramatists in the calibre of Sugathapala de Silva is felt more strongly than ever before in a milieu dominated by semi-literate transdistortors, pseudo literati in robes and half-baked editors-in –chief of particularly Sinhalese newspapers.

It is highly unlikely that dramatists such as Sugathapala de Silva, academics like Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra, and literati like Martin Wickremasinghe, Gunadasa Amerasekara, K. Jayatilake and bilingual journalists such as Ajith Samaranayake would ever emerge from a milieu where meritocracy does prevail.