Tower Hall is 100 years!

The Tower Hall in Maradana, one of the very old landmarks of Colombo is 100 years old.

It was opened at an auspicious time in the morning of December 6, 1911 by Anagarika Dharmapala, and that same evening, at 9.30 p.m. the play Pandukabhaya was staged under the patronage and presence of the Governor, Sir Henry MacCallum.

The play was written and produced by Charles Dias, one of the two leading playwright - producers of the day. The other was John de Silva.

Going to the theatre was very popular then. It was the only form of public entertainment 100 years ago; but there was no proper theatre or play-house. The Tower Hall was the first and only proper theatre in the whole of Ceylon, until the Lionel Wendt Theatre was opened in 1952, 41 years later.

The Tower Hall was built by G. Don Hendrick Seneviratna Appuhamy of Heiyantuduwa, Kelaniya, on a land he owned in Panchikawatta, alongside the Maradana railway station. The land was being used as a parking-lot for horse-carts, the then mode of transport for people with money.

Construction of the hall which began in 1909 was completed in 1911. It was modelled on the Grand Theatre in Bombay. It had a proper stage with curtains that could be drawn, a proper dressing-room and a balcony. There were 1500 seats.

The clock tower which is its distinctive architectural feature has given the hall its name Tower Hall. The tower is a copy of the tower in London's Tower Bridge, across the River Thames.

It is said that it was Hendrick Appuhamy's third son, Edmund Seneviratna, a theatre-fan, who persuaded the father to build a proper theatre.

His son-in-law, Charles Dias' flair for play-writing and the popularity of his plays must have given Hendrick Appuhamy the confidence to go ahead with the project.

In 1833, the Elphinstone Dramatic Company of Bombay also known as Baliwala Company staged plays in Colombo.

They were very popular and soon other theatre groups came over and staged their own plays. Inspired by the plays of the Indians, our own people began writing plays like those staged by the visiting theatre groups and going to the 'teetar' (theatre) became very popular.

About125 years ago people had plenty of leisure but little to do in their free time. No cinema to go to, no radio to listen to. Going to the theatre was the main form of entertainment, not only for the moneyed class. Some became addicts.

By the first decade of the last century, play-going was so popular that there had been about 24 play-houses in Maradana and Pettah.

But there were no proper halls for staging plays. Some were wooden sheds with thatched roofs and some were zinc sheds. One such hall was called Belek Hall (Tin Hall).

Even John de Silva, was staging his plays in such make-shift halls.

When the Tower Hall was opened in 1911, he had been producing plays for a full 20 years and drawing large crowds. Charles Dias was also producing similar plays and they were as popular as John de Silva. These plays are called Nrutti.

The Tower Hall, opened a new chapter in the history of Sinhala theatre. From then on a play was staged every evening at the Tower Hall, except for a short time in 1915, when the theatre was closed because of communal riots in Colombo.

In the first ten years, the plays staged were mainly those written and produced by Charles Dias - Padmavathy Vidura, Sivamma Dhanapala and so on.

Mention Tower Hall and the name that comes to mind at once is John de Silva. Tower Hall and John de Silva had become inseparable. But a full ten years were to pass before a John de Silva play was staged at the Tower.

He and his Arya Subodha Natya Sabha were staging plays in rented halls, while Charles Dias and his actors, known as Arya Sinhala Natya Sabha were staging two or three plays every week at the Tower Hall.

When Charles Dias couldn't cope with the demand, other play-wrights were hired to write for the Arya Sinhala Natya Sabha.

The new theatre not only drew large audiences, but also drew players from John de Silva's company. Actors must have found it very flattering and very satisfying to play in this new and well-equipped hall. Equally or more satisfying must have been the better terms of payment.

One by one, the small pay-houses closed and by 1927 the only play-house, in Colombo, in fact in the whole island, was the Tower Hall. John de Silva died in 1922 but his plays continued to be staged at the Tower alternating with those produced by Charles Dias, drawing large crowds until the 'Silent Pictures' took over. On 12, September 1931, Tower Hall became Tower Cinema Hall, but plays continued to be staged, not daily as before.

Nrtta popularised by John de Silva and Charles Dias gave way to a new genre of plays. Many were adaptations of stories from Indian films. Sirisena Wimalaweera's Rodi Kella, is an outstanding play of this genre.

Seebert Dias, father of dance-maestro Chitrasena took over the running of Tower Hall for some time in the early thirties.

His role of Shylock in the Sinhala adaptation of Merchant of Venice was, it is said, the talk of the town in the thirties and forties.

The arrival of the Minerva Players, headed by the Jayamanna brothers, staging plays on contemporary themes, like Kadavunu Poronduwa (Broken Promise) and Rukmani Devi's singing took away theatre-goers from the Tower Hall. They had greater appeal than the plays of Wimalaweera, D. V. Seneviratna, Organ Rodrigo, Bodhipala and others of this school.

Two or three years after Independence, an attempt was made with a production of Vessantara by the artist J. D. A. Perera, to revive nrutti and bring back theatre-goers to the Tower Hall. It was a dismal failure. The 1950s Maradana was a crowded, untidy and unclean commercial hut shunned by the leisured class and theatre-goers. But the Tower Hall was there like a rock in Maradana, the clock striking the hour.

It was R. Premadasa, when he was Prime Minister who resurrected the Tower Hall and brought it back to its former glory. With a 40 million yen grant given under the Japanese Government's Cultural Grant Aid Programme, lighting equipment was installed, the hall repaired and facilities upgraded.The front verandah was made a picture-gallery with photographs of playwrights, producers, actors and actresses of Tower Hall's hey-day.

The born again Tower Hall was opened in September 1989 with the staging of Siri Sangabo, a nrutti by John de Silva, produced by Henry Jayasena.

Once again plays were staged, girls performed their arangetrams, pre-schools had their year-end concerts and there were musical shows at the Tower.

I remember watching school children presenting nrtta. It was an inter-school competition. I can almost hear a school-girl from Galle singing 'Govey genu lassanai.'

I do not know what the play was. If my memory is correct, that school carried away the prize.

The Tower Hall was refurbished once again in 2008-9. New chairs replaced the old ones which were damaged, and a another dressing room added. The new chairs being bigger and more comfortable the hall can now seat only 850; earlier it was 1500.

The Tower Hall continues to be a venue for musical shows, plays, dance performances and also for seminars for A.L. students, and the clock continues to strike the hour. But the Tower seems to be a poor relation of its neighbour Elphinston which is now the more popular venue for dramas and cultural shows.

-Sumana Saparamadu