DRAMA

Food for thought of the times we live in

A review of Maranaya Nomile:

by Dilshan Boange

Debutante stage drama director, Susanga Kahandawalaarachchi, presented 'Maranaya Nomile' (Death Freely Available) to mark his directorial arrival to the realm of Sri Lankan theatre on July 18. Taking into consideration the reaction to what was offered on the boards of the Punchi Theatre on that night, I would say Kahandawalaarachchi made a successful entry as a theatre director.

The play he chose to offer theatregoers spoke of his mettle as an artiste with a vision for meaningful, introspective, thought provoking stage drama.

Maranaya Nomile is a Sinhala translation of a Marathi play by Indian playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar. The play's title in English is 'Reflection' while its original Marathi title is 'Pratibimba' as I came to know after checking on the internet. And anyone who has a reasonable knowledge of Sinhala and watches the play will of course find the Marathi title self-explanatory, just as much as the English title is, when seeing what the story is about. In this regard I wonder why the translator, Sathyapala Galketiya, didn't name the Sinhala script 'Prathibimbaya' or 'Chayawa', and instead chose the given titlem which admittedly gives a broader scope of conjecture to guess what the play is about, although the original title relates to the element that is at the very core of the issue.

Be that as it may, 'Maranaya Nomile' is, I believe, a faithful translation and does not seek to present an 'adaptive vein' to offer a Sri Lankan context. One of the principal reasons I say this is because the character 'Broomstick' greets the other characters with 'Namaskar' (the traditional Marathi salutation like 'Namaste' in Hindi or our 'Ayubowan') and Marathi literature is spoken of in the play clearly positing it as a story that happens (presumably), in a major city in Maharashtra, and very likely Mumbai, which incidentally is a city believed to have a populace equal to what we have in our country!

Mr Guddaya

The story revolves around a man who discovers one morning that he no longer has a reflection in the mirror. He, the protagonist, nicknamed -'Mr. Guddaya' lives in a rented room in an apartment in the fifth floor of a building in a big congested city. The bedroom is the sole setting for the entire play and the characters that enter the room of this somewhat slovenly desk job worker are -the landlady, an old leftwing unionist named 'Kodi', and the young lady who calls herself Broomstick.

At the very heart of this play is a hard hitting existential inquiry about what our existence as individuals is worth? There is an ontological investigation that runs through the veins of this play as to what constitutes and verifies 'existence'. Maranaya Nomile is a deeply philosophical play that is not meant for the theatregoer whose sole purpose of going to a 'theatre show' is to immerse in laughter and unwind with comedy. Also the narrative technique devised to explore and depict the interiorities of the characters may prove absurd to those whose approach to understanding theatre is strictly along the avenue of Chekhovian realism.

Expressing and establishing our 'individuality' in the face of endless multitudes of people who struggle to affirm their existence through proving their worth to others is becoming an ever increasing competition. And our visual appearance thus is paramount to assert our existence. So what is your worth if you don't have a reflection? Will it elevate you to endless fame or degrade you to complete worthlessness? These are two sides to the possible outcomes that are presented through the protagonist and his landlady. A notable feature or stylistic of the play is a heavy reliance on dialogue to deliver the philosophical premise and how the issue is to be addressed and given inquiry to arrive at revelations. I couldn't help but feel there was in that sense a Jean-Paul Sartre likeness as one would find perhaps in one of his novels like The Age of Reason.

Reflection

"What does your reflection show- your mind, your heart, your soul?" asks the landlady from her distraught tenant. In this question lies one of the key assessment points of what our reflection could mean. But what if the reflection's sole function is to visually affirm our existence to our own consciousness? In this digital era where an obsessive 'selfie mega mania' has gripped the youth, perhaps this play hints of what a catastrophe would befall an entire generation if humans had no reflection. I don't know if Elkunchwar intended it so, but this play being staged at this point in time is perhaps a means to offer a facet of critical review of this era of ultra 'ego tripping' on social media that seems to give 'meaning' to most youth.

The play brings out the question of what gives credence to our conceptions and perceptions about our 'existence' as an 'indisputable fact'. If you can't see yourself in a mirror how do you know you exist? Apart from sight, the sensory faculty of the 'touch' -the 'bodily medium' is then cited by the landlady who being a widow does yearn for some physical connectivity with a male body.

This play, I believe, 'reflects' what I have come to understand as something of an Indian issue when it comes to individual identity in the face of an ever increasing population and intense competition. In India only gods, leaders, and celebrities have faces. Everyone else is susceptible to facelessness. The sheer volume of people that flow through a major city like Chennai can be highly overwhelming. It may propel the more perceptive and sensitively observant thinker to wonder if an individual's 'face' is even worth anything unless 'elevated' above the masses. None of the characters in this play can claim to have a status that matters in society. Therefore perhaps whether they have a reflection or not may even not matter, since to begin with, their faces don't really mean anything either, in the larger context of society.

Darkness

Another drilling question that is brought in the play is how much can we really know of what lies within a person? In this regard the play presents an initiative approach to unravel interiorities of characters and also to create interplay of interiorities. Going out the door and entering through the window, characters enter and exit minds of other characters. There is darkness, silence, and many an undesirable feeling that benumbs them in this most private of domains where nothing can be hidden.

What is interesting to note is the ease with which this switching of domains from the 'physical' to the 'psychological' happens as though it was just another mundane matter. The space of the bedroom is thus broken in its dimensions of real and unreal as though it was the most natural thing to happen.

The play was not heavily built on a schema of symbolism but more on how to understand the depiction of switching planes of existence -physical to physiological, as narrative modality. It was in certain ways an approach to playing with 'stagecraft' to deliver an expose of interiorities that reside in the characters without objectifying the characters but making them active participants in the process of unravelling their own inner selves. It is this that may make this play somewhat inaccessible in respect of its narrative technique to any viewers who are accustomed to digesting drama in the traditional realistic mode of storytelling.

I would say generally the props, stage set, and costumes were satisfactorily presented to mark 'Maranaya Nomile' as a successful production. And the performance by the four players, Susanga Kahandawalaarachchi, Wasantha Vitachchi, Oshadhi Gunasekera, and Kumudu Kumarasinghe is commendable. The question however remains as to whether most Sinhala theatregoers here whose first choice is mostly comedic entertainment will find this play addressing their needs of 'entertainment'?

I sadly feel that seekers of popular theatre are unlikely to find this play to their 'tastes'. What is saddening in that light is that this play builds a theatricalised discourse that offers much food for thought of the times we live in; it raises issues that we would be better for contemplating on. Perhaps what the title itself of this Sinhala translation of the Marathi play 'Pratibimba' is suggesting, is that individuality is eroding and our individual 'deaths', which will not matter to anyone, are now freely available. It's now a matter of deciding whether to continue along the meaningless existential track or as the protagonist does, step off the ledge, and bring it all to an end.