DRAMA REVIEW

Jayalath Manorathana's Handa Nihanda:

Home truths and stark revelations

by Dilshan Boange

Thunder and lightning vied for prominence at the Wendt as Handa Nihanda (Vocal and Silent), the latest creation of Jayalath Manorathna, veteran of the stage and screen, came to life on March 4. A solitary figure bearing a dim kerosene lamp appeared in a partially lit stage, revealing the living room of an old household, and moving like a relic in a forgotten world.

Residing at the very heart of the play are some revelations and burning questions, the present cannot negate.

The story revolves around the career, principles, and predicament of music maestro Jamis Silva and his fellow musicians, who generally share the sentiment of being bound to the ideal of preserving the integrity and purity of song and music as an art, reflecting the ethos of a national culture. Handa Nihanda is by no means a chauvinistic work of parochial 'localism'. It is a well balanced wholesome story that offers fact and perspective on scales that must be grasped for the 'sound reason' it offers.

This is a story today's Sri Lanka needs to hear and see.

In terms of stage craft, the set design was semi-realist and costumes were of a realist motif fitting context and situation. The narrative style blended the material world with musical elements that call for stylisation of behaviour, which though theatricalised and not fully realist at times, gave space for a facet of the surreal.

Music is a highly potent force through which a nation may project its culture. But as culture itself is not static, music too will have its dynamism to reflect change. What 'direction' however, should that 'change' take is one of the questions the play poses.

Is re-engineering classics with 'modern twists' necessarily innovation? Let's not forget the issue is not just limited to song and music anymore, as there is now a genre of fiction dubbed 'Mash-up novels' to which belong Jane Austen classics 'reworked' as comic-horror stories titled 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', 'Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters', whose 'authorships' are accredited to both Jane Austen and the contemporary writers whose 'textual surgery' has reengineered the Georgian era classics.

Initial ideation

The play does propound whether any authenticity or authorship can actually be claimed over 'expressions' that lack originality in initial ideation? Manorathna's creation, on the one hand instigates one to ponder the merits of Sri Lanka's music revolution of the late 90s, which is generally perceived to be accredited to the duo Bhathiya and Santhush and those who followed in their footsteps. On the other hand, the play presents the younger generations' need to break free from the limitations imposed by elders and their ethos.

I couldn't help but feel how stimulating this play is as a work to spur the people's need to engage in active discourse over what creates the clash of generations in the arts and how the need for preservation comes to blows with the need to change. And let's not forget Handa Nihanda mounts the stage in the aftermath of the public debate and furore sparked over songstress Kishani Jayasinghe's operatic rendition of Dhaanno Budunge on Independence Day this year.

In Handa Nihanda, voices of the young generation speak vociferously, about how music is evolutionary and explicate the music that was birthed out of oppression in the West. Blues and jazz speak through rhythms of jaggedness and sporadic fusions as the sound of frustrations and indignations of their creators. But how authentically does Sri Lanka's new generation grasp and realise this as practitioners and experimenters of those music genres without subscribing to mimicry and fusion of traditions for the sake of being sophisticated? And can they claim creativity in originality of ideation for a work? This is somewhat a hard hitting argument brought out in Manorathna's play.

Along the critical discourse the play builds, some of the investigations offered is the question as to how genuine and reliable the leftist party, the 'Sama Samaja Pakshaya' led by N.M. Perera is. Jamis Perera and his fellow artistes are patriots who believe in independence from the British. Interestingly, this play offers insights on how the segment of people represented by the protagonists viewed with great ardour the independence struggle of India and their nationalist sentiment, which occupies a notable place in their argumentative discussions as artists of intellect. The clash of opinions between Tagore and Ghandi cited, in my opinion, indicate how within the Indian national(ist) movement, the belief in art as an individual freedom may have been incongruent with politics for freedom.

Through the machinations of the character Nicholas Epa, the unapologetic trader in music as a commodity, the plays depicts the artiste as the prisoner of the businessman, faced with the ultimatum of either selling out to big money or being wiped out by penury.

Is there a price on conscience? Is a conscience worth fighting for? This is a question Manorathna's play grapples with. 'What purpose does/should art serve?' is not a question ever answered to finality in society. Does or should, music as an art exist for its own sake as an aesthetic creation to be enjoyed apolitically? However that may be, Silva's adamant refusal to create art for the glorification of the British monarch speaks soundly of how he views his art in relation to not serving politics he cannot hold true to his conscience.

Brutal reality

Early on in the play, Silva played by Manorathna says "the artiste suffers in order to give pleasure to the enjoyers of art'. I am reminded of a line in the English version of Valmiki's Ramayana that I read as a teenager -From shoka (sorrow) comes shloka (verse). Epa, played by W. Jayasiri, presents brutal reality as an unapologetic creature of the consumerist system, mocking the aged musicians for not planning for their twilight year in their career's heyday, and who with their ailing health are in dire straits towards the end of the play. Epa pronounces a bitter truth, that "the time to think about 'dusk' is at the break of dawn itself".

Among the failings of the celebrated maestro Silva, is his family life. His daughter flatly tells him that although his knowledge of eastern music is optimum, his understanding of the eastern woman is nil. For whom does the artiste pine? Silva himself, even in his debility, refuses to sell out and says it is the hopeful thought of composing another song yet again that kept him going, even after losing his parental home to a mortgage and being forced to live an impoverished life in a rented house.

The final segment of the story really delivers an uppercut to the contemporary trends of TV station driven 'reality

star' ventures and what they offer in terms of both 'artistes and performances' and 'judges and adjudication'. The 'Grand Pa Finale' TV Show that features the aged musicians, and makes of them publically designated charity cases, depicts how the older generation and their dignity are being buried by today's 'politics of marketing'. The end is tragic, and to the sensitive viewer, benumbing. As in the start thunder rumbles gently, and darkness descends, to mark the end.

What Manorathna has offered is a contemporary critique of our climates that revives times past to reflect on and reassess the moral worth of paths charted for us by the politics of market-economy consumerism. Handa Nihanda is a work to be saluted and celebrated.