An Evening of Short Plays:

Food for thought as a social critique

by Dilshan Boange

A few months ago the 'Keti Naatya Sandyavak' (An Evening of Short Plays) unfolded on the boards at the Lionel Wendt with four Sinhala short plays written by Praneeth Chanaka Muramudali and Sanjeewa Pathirage. They were brought to life as a production by creative director extraordinaire, veteran theatre practitioner, Jerome L. de Silva.

What can be said as noteworthy about the show was how it was presented with a 'creative investment' to be a 'production' that intended to give viewers more than their money's worth. It was in that sense 'theatre' that offered some serious food for thought as a social critique, while not bereft of the ingredients which mark a production as one seeking to 'entertain' its audience.

The four short plays were titled 'Jananige maranaya' (Janani's death), 'Yakku kelambei' (The devils are stirred up), 'Mang athulata ennada? (May I come in?) and Ethule yuddayak, (A war within). The first three were written by Muramudali and the last by Pathirage. Each short play had a different theme and setting. The first was in the strict confines of a household where the sole duty of attending to an invalid mother had fallen on the youngest child who seeks his own liberation from the predicament he is in through perhaps the eventual demise of the mother. How the different members of the family each have their individual goals and aspirations as well as their frustrations and anxieties while being conscious of their family bonds and responsibilities is brought out while dealing with how the hierarchism of the household can be oppressive in the name of filial, fraternal, and familial duties.

The story is a bold one and was brought out well with interplay between dramatic expression of emotions and driving the story through dialogue.

Dark humour

What unfolded in 'Yakku Kalambei' was a story that had dark humour bound to strings of hilarity to touch the pulse of the Sri Lankan theatre goer. The stagecraft devised for this play displayed a narrative technique that was innovative and theatrically stimulating. Hunger and starvation can drive people to the brink of madness, and insanity becomes an internalised lodger that resists eviction. There is no barrier of age when it comes to what hunger can drive people to do. The two youths beleaguered by penury and persisting hunger represent in one respect, a segment of the young generation that refuses to be manual labourers to at least earn a meal, and may instead opt to 'qualify' for prison so that they may at least 'escape starvation'.

The third play brought out a question pertinent to the present times. What is the worth of education today? Education today in our country has become a commercialised industry and relies to an extent on mass media to be validated for its value. The television industry today by creating endlessly diversified strains of 'reality shows' that are actually highly controlled sensationalised talent competitions, misleads an entire generation of youngsters. The

playwright has very perceptively caught onto how these two sectors -'education' and 'television' as industrialised, crassly commercialised spheres of business should be exposed for the duping they do to an entire gullible generation of youngsters.

The creative direction of the director must be applauded for how the stage and its physical space together with lighting and sounds were used to create the scenario of the 'Refund Star', a reality game show that became the ruse to decide whether in fact the student who demanded a refund of the money he spent to 'earn' a degree really 'qualifies' for a refund. A very heady topic that critiques the times we live in.

Price of liberation

The final play was one that had war, and the 'price of liberation' as its theme. Not related to the separatist war that waged in our own country, but set in something of an eastern European geographical setting, the story nevertheless rang out a strong message about what violence begets and how 'love' and 'sex' in times of war play out between victors and victims. War, in some respects is all about the prevalence of the will of a power hierarchy, and really having nothing to do with winning justice

for the oppressed, is perhaps one of the propositions the play sought to make.

Many years ago, during my undergrad days in Colombo varsity, I watched Dhananjaya Karunaratne's 'Sihina Rangahala' at the Elphinstone theatre.

That was my first experience of watching a collection of short plays put on the boards as a 'theatre show'. While Sinhala theatre is considerably much wider spread and robust in terms of the volume of viewership in the island compared to English theatre, there is surprisingly few attempts by mainstream Sinhala theatre practitioners and drama producers to put on collections of short plays as shows. I wonder if the genre of the short play has yet been assiduously explored for viability among Sinhala theatregoers. The value of these kinds of shows is that more than one playwright, director, would get to present their works to audiences.

The lights, the costumes, the level of acting talent on stage, all indicated that a commendable degree of effort had been behind Keti Naatya Sandyavak, and therefore The Workshop Players and its captain -Jerome L. de Silva should be lauded for putting on a production that hopefully will encourage more shows of this nature to come alive on stage in the future to enable short plays scripted on paper to gain colour, form, flesh and motion as 'theatre'.