Gem of a Lankan play shines in Southern California

Reviewed by Nandasiri Jasentuliyana

Writer director Udayasiri Wickramarathnage’s outstanding production of Rangapem Iwarai (Acting is over), was recently staged in Los Angeles, sponsored by the Sarachchandra Buddhist Center, together with the Asia Film and Dance Foundation of the US.

The play was staged to a near full house, at the Van Nuys Auditorium, to the sheer delight of the theatregoers in Southern California.

The play belongs to a new genre of theatre not hitherto familiar to the Sri Lankan theatrical experience. Traditional theatre audiences generally expect to hear dialogue on stage.

In his play, Udayasiri introduces the traditional Sri Lankan audience to a new medium of monodrama with no dialogues.

The actors, instead, engage in addressing the audience in a series of lively monologues.

Just as Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra, doyen of Sinhala Theatre created a new and unique form of dance drama, extracting the essence of Nadagam prevalent among the rural folks Udayasiri’s production has brought forth a new form of Sinhala theatre.

It is somewhat similar in form to the traditions of devil dancing, where without any dialogue, lone dancers in the guise of various devils; appear in succession, to keep the onlookers entertained through the night.

It is a three act play and each act brings on stage only a single actor who dramatises the script through monologues, interspersed with song and dance. On occasion, a conversation is carried out by the performer double acting depicting two imaginary characters. For a single actor on stage to carry the play for 45 minutes or so, is more than a challenging task.

Udayasri was fortunately able to bring on stage, two of Sri Lanka’s legendary actors Sriyantha Mendis and Kamal Addaraarachchi, to give life to his most demanding script.

They along with an up-and-coming talented actress Subuddhi Lakmali, kept the audience in rapt attention with their mesmerising display of talent.

Monologues

Even in the West where monologues are somewhat common, they are limited to brief soliloquies by those hosting events as entrance or exit monologues, or as parts of Shakespearean theatre, and otherwise, limited to stand-up comedians.

But monodrama that was common in Roman and Greek theatre is extremely rare in modern day popular theatre. Udayasiri is to be admired for his unique creativity in bringing forth this production in an outstanding manner.

Part dramatic, part tragic, part comical, blended with dance and music, it keeps the audience ebbing and flowing through the entire gamut of emotions. It is a social satire with a dose of political commentary, expressing a deeply philosophical message, conveyed through a trilogy of brilliant acting.

The theme running through the play is that one acquires throughout one’s life various perceptions and experiences, which shape one’s thoughts and actions resulting in creating an artificial personality that continually responds to the societal demands, masking one’s real self.

Thus, it is if we go through life wearing a mask, projecting a false self, and as we eventually get use to that mask, we then mistakenly assume it to be the reality. The play graphically illustrates how in wearing that mask we live our lives without any fear, bashfulness or diffidence, and in the process, sacrificing our [Athmaya].

Pretentions

Instead, the Rangapem Iwarai attempts to project the message, that a life devoid of such pretentions and which embraces a sincere, authentic and righteous, living is the meaningful one.

In Act one, veteran performer, Sriyantha Mendis, displays a marvellous piece of acting as a dead person, bringing to life the central thesis of the script. As the curtain rises he emerges in a ghost-like costume from a prop depicting a vertically placed coffin, and marches quite deliberately towards the audience to the edge of the stage.

This prelude is for the obvious purpose of creating an eerie ambience to his dramatic performance that follows. Later, the sense of creepiness is enhanced by his deliberate movements, measured dance steps, and intermittent lines that are sung in a loud scary voice in the midst of jarring background music.

He begins his monologue by identifying himself as a dead man questioning the audience “are you afraid”. He follows up with the response himself, and enlightens the audience that, fear is among the living because of the complexities of their day to day life; unlike the dead who have no such fear as they are devoid of any feelings.

He proceeds to explain, that the audience has no reason, therefore, to be afraid of the dead, but should be afraid of the living - ones seated next to them. He goes on in this manner to expound the frailties of the living that are acting out their lives to meet the societal expectations and challenges, rather than expressing their true self and embracing a righteous life.

Politician

He concludes the performance – the act he himself put on, by removing his garb to reveal his inner garment of a politician as his real self. He mimics the politicians raising his hands together above his head and wishing the audience ‘Ayubowan’ in the traditional pause of a politician, in a symbolic expression in which he explains, the politicians are in fact wishing the public that ‘may you live long to be fooled by the artificial acts put on by us the politicians’.

In Act two, the Director introduces to the stage a rising star, Subuddhi Lakmali, as a dream. She begins by questioning the audience as to what is a dream, and whether a dream can be seen with one’s eyes open, or whether what one sees with open eyes is indeed a dream in itself.

It is a highly philosophical concept that she goes on to explore in her presentation, including through an exquisite recital of song and dance, in a multitalented performance. In the process, she questions what the notion of love is. Her own response seems to equate love as part of a dream, as dreams are made of images, ideas, emotions and sensations, just like what we conceive as the real world.

An inescapable deduction of her presentation is that, as some philosophers such as Descartes expounded, what we conceive as the ‘real world’ could indeed be an illusion: a dream. This is brought home to the audience as she ends her act by concluding that she, representing the dream, and the audience, representing the reality, are both a dream and a reality.

Acting prowess

In Act three, virtuoso actor, Kamal Addaraarachchi, gives an exceptional performance as Sabakolaya (stage fright). An hour-long monologue encompassing the entire second half of the play, kept the audience in rapt attention. That in itself speaks volumes of his acting prowess, as well as, the depth and beauty of the script that Udayasiri has created.

The character portrayed is part comical and part dramatic interspersed again with song and music. The character he portrays represents the duality within one’s self: the real person and the one who goes through life wearing a mask believing it to be the reality.

What was loosely translated above as ‘stage fright’ is indeed the shyness that involuntarily appears and disappears in the performer (artfully portrayed by Addaraarachchi), symbolically reminding us of one’s real inner self that constantly emerges in ourselves, which in the case of the performer, he continually struggles to suppress each time it occurs, that his assumed pretentious self, considered by us as reality, can be acted out.

Thus, it is suggested that in one’s public persona, we act out of character from one’s real self, and projects the personality that one wants the beholder to perceive as the real self.

Real self

That urge becomes even more enhanced as more public one's behaviour becomes.

Addaraarachci gives excellent representations of public personalities including the politicians and priests acting out their masked selves, even to the extent where patriotism itself become an aspect of acting out one’s pretentious self. The play seems also to poignantly suggest, that whenever anger strikes us, one’s acting ceases and the real self emerges.

The portrayal of these intricate thoughts are seamlessly presented while constantly moving back and forth from the comical to drama, a demanding role indeed that is carried off in a masterly fashion.

As an outstandingly talented actor, he has used the full freedom apparently given by the Director to develop the character, to create the right blend of Writer’s intentions and his own interpretation of the character. In this unique play, the director cleverly uses the stage to bring political satire, sarcasm, wittiness and above all, critical observation of societal practices represented as frivolous indulgence by the populace, perhaps as a means of survival; making it theatre from the top shelf. While this review represents the understanding or interpretation of the reviewer of a complex play, with a script containing considerable philosophical depth in the tradition of playwrights of the caliber of Eugene O’Neill or Arthur Miller, who wrote classic monologues; others may carry away quite different interpretations of the three characters depicted in their individual roles.

That is as it should be with a great play, where the writer is not laying out a straightforward thesis that has a single storyline, but a script that lends itself to multiple interpretations generating different thoughts according to one’s own experiences. And that is indeed laudable.

The writer is former Deputy Director General, UN office, Vienna and Director UN office for Outer Space Affairs, Los Angeles, California, United States.