Calling out Sabakolaya

By Dilshan Boange

The most recent creation to the Sri Lanka theatre by playwright Udayasiri Wickremaratne is Rangapem Ivarai which carries its English title Adieu to Acting This work like his previous one Suddek oba amathai is a trio of solo acts that have thematically interlinking ingredients.

Udayasiri Wickremaratne

But the response from the public to this work by Wickremaratne can be partly due to the 'politics of casting' one may say, since one of the trio is Kamal Addararachchi who needless to say, is a heavyweight of the screen who has been somewhat underused in theatre. Like the silver screen, the theatre too has its own magic, that it is a medium of live performance where the larger than life characters are physically alive in front of the audience.

Kamal Addararachchi

Addararachchi is an actor with immense acting talent from among the fraternity of actors in Sri Lanka. There are no arguments on that account I believe.

However, how many times has he been called to perform roles that accord him the 'space' and 'scope' to bring out his abilities to give life to characters that grip and enthral viewers is another question altogether.

The prowess Addararachchi possesses to mercurially mould and undo moods to suit his character and the moment in the story can be seen clearly in works such as Jayantha Chandrasiri's film Guerrilla Marketing.

The fact that Addararachchi can draw crowds is rather well understood. Therefore, one can even venture to the point of wickedly suggesting that perhaps Wickremaratne, a senior Sinhala copywriter at Phoenix Ogilvy and well versed in the ingredients of advertising may have had the aspect of marketing in mind when he set out to select his cast for his latest play!

In that sense was the playwright doing some guerrilla marketing of his own one may ask! But jibes and jests aside, anyone who has watched the play will agree that what Addararachchi brings to the stage in his unique style is priceless.

Therefore, whatever contentions that can be concocted on the theoretical premise of what Wickremaratne's play merits or not, to be applauded or not, the entertainment value brought to the show through Addararachchi's contribution is undeniable.

The stage set for Addararachchi's performance isn't 'embraced' as his space when he comes to sight rather coyly and exists unceremoniously without speaking a word, indicating that he is not yet comfortable on stage as there is some seriously self inhibiting shyness that propels him out of the viewer's vision.

Enter the 'crowd puller'

That is the first glimpse of the 'crowd puller' Addararachchi, the audience gets in 'Adieu to Acting'. This move of coming on stage only to scoot out childishly builds on the audience's anticipation factor to make the role played by Addararachchi one that gets heightened at the outset. The absence of the most awaited presence is something of a 'Godot effect' one may say.

In this respect Wickremaratne manipulates that effect to show a glimpse of the comic looking Addararachchi only to have him cause the emptiness to occur again by running out of sight. This in effect is the Sabakolaya at work. On that Wickremaratne has touched on the symbolic ingredient of the character by thrusting to the audience a simple but practically effective measure.

A scene from the play

What does this somewhat symbolic and abstract character represent? Sabakolaya is a Sinhala word which may not find its fully complete or fulsome English counterpart in the word 'shyness' alone. That is after all a reality in translation between two languages which are rooted in two hemispheres.

Sabakolaya projects the idea about that inner inhibition that manifests as reluctance to be more expressive and assertive. It is a form of shyness for certain, but one that stifles a person from gaining ground when offered the spotlight on a platter. It doesn't equate to the term 'stage fright' because stage fright simply cripples the person put on the spotlight to face the audience and causes inertia of a sort to deactivate one's senses.

It is a result of being overly self conscious and due to lack of self confidence to do whatever it is that is required to be done in view of the public.

The invisible Sabakolaya

Wickremaratne conjures up through Addararachchi's antics, an imaginary character named Sabakolaya who manifests the quality of Sabakolaya as per what that shyness of inner inhibitions does to a person tasked with performing to an audience. On stage, one sees Addararachchi assume various personae and execute entertaining expressions that serve as critical statements and 'theatricalised caricatures' so to say, about various facets of today's society. The one limit to his expressionism, the only barrier that he meets in claiming the stage to serve entirely to be 'his world' and thus give credence to the Shakespearean maxim -'All the world's a stage', is this inner voice within that stifles his stride and makes him see the comicality of what he is either doing or about to do. There is through that angle in Addararachchi's character the unveiling of the human duality. The voices of 'do' and 'don't' battling within; but taking on visibility on stage through a man at odds with himself.

Therefore, what is shown is a man who is put to the task of performing but on seeing the fictitiousness of his own self on stage, becomes tickled to laugh uncontrollably as an unintended admission of the absurdity of what he is set to do. It is a laughter that reveals the 'illegitimacy of an actor's performance' when read in conjunction with what a speaker to an audience ought to be -a human being believed by his listeners to speak of 'reality'.

The masses rarely question critically what is delivered from the pulpit. Sometimes all too ready to be swept away by the magic of performance art, people want to fully believe what is shown and told them from an 'elevated ground'. Perhaps it is this unheard inner laughter of the 'duper' as he waxes eloquent to convince his audience that Wickremaratne seeks to 'enlighten' the viewers.

So long as Sabakolaya is allowed to affect the act, there can be no effective 'acting'. It is perhaps an indication of how the conscience works when one takes the stage. How true to our conscience and beliefs are we in executing our work and the roles we play in life?

For Kamal Addararachchi the actor, it is about how his 'acting' gets affected, because so long as Sabakolaya hangs around, the 'act' gets hindered. The Sabakolaya act of Addararachchi takes you on a ride of laughter. But know that as the curtain draws to close the act and Addararachchi who is on the ground in tears over the death of Sabakolaya moulds his mournful sound to shift to the sound of uproarious laughter, if you join him, with laughter of your own...you serve only to laugh at yourself.