DRAMA  

Keti Naatya Gomuwa:

Statements of despair and dwelling aspirations

by Dilshan Boange

Four impactful works of theatre mounted the boards of the Punchi Theatre in Borella on February 18, as the 'Unnamed Theatre Group' presented their' Keti Naatya Gomuwa' (a Short Play Collection). The short plays each had a different theme and set of central issues that gave them the distinction of being works with separate identities and not bound to one another but reflected significantly the common angst of today's Sri Lankan youth over the burdens that have been bequeathed to them through socio-cultural perceptions and socio-political predicaments. 'Keti Naatya Gomuwa' shows how there is a vein of restiveness in contemporary youth that questions the legacy of generation(s) that precede them.

These plays are not for children owing to the use of expletives in certain instances.

The four plays were in order of performance -'Daahak Denavako' (Give Me a Thousand) written and directed by Jude Claudius, 'Aanduve Rassava' (The Government Job) written by Susith Vijayamuni and directed by Pradeep Aragama, 'Kiri Amma Avathaare' (Grandmother's Ghost) written and directed by Samantha Paranaliyanage, and 'Dharmishta Samajayak Godanagam'u (Let's Build a Righteous Society) written and directed by Jude Claudius.

The first three plays were dramas with duos, while the last had an ensemble of five personae. Casting was commendable in each play and brought out the power of the script as dialogue that was 'lived' on stage. While all the actors in general performed very well and deserve robust applause, I would like to especially cite Nalin Lusena (acting in the first and last play), Kanishka Saviour and Surani Anupama (both in the second play) as being notably praiseworthy, while Nilanka Dahanayaka as the prophesying madman in the last play delivered a brilliant performance.

Equally important

The first play had a story premise and dynamic situational interplay between a suicidal old man and his young male lodger on an unrelenting mission to find money to pay for a taxi ride to go rescue a good friend believed to be contemplating suicide. It presented the complexity and frictional intensity of human emotions in a moment of personal crisis in the context of intrapersonal prioritisations determining that all human lives cannot be weighed out as equally important. It spoke of a 'concentricism' as the basis of who qualifies for our generosity in this world. In effect it spoke of a concentric humanism as the reality that shapes our humanity. The play drives in some strong questions and among the most overtly thematic ones are -What leads people to suicide? Can money solve all problems? Does money decide between life and death? These are surely questions pertinent to the youth of today.

The second play showed how the desperation for 'suitable employment' and financial stability creates a dilemma to a young couple hoping to get married and enter the fold of a conventional life, when the only job the young man is able to secure up to that point is of 'Executioner' at the Prisons Department. What do young graduates really want when they apply for jobs? It is just a monthly salary? The play asserts these 'wants' as much more, being -financial security plus dignity through 'designation' construing something of a 'status claim' in the eyes of society. The acting was powerful and almost spellbinding as the young lovers intensified their dialogues. Towards the end a polemic develops as the young woman who sees in her lover a 'killer' who urges the abortion of their child she reveals to be carrying, since he would rather do that than allow an 'illegitimate conception' to take its natural course and be thrown off track from the conventionalisms of how a 'respectable' marriage and family life should systematically develop. The most impressionable line spoken by the young woman that struck me was Ape asaranakama veradi karanna lisen ekak neme. (Our helplessness is not a licence to do wrong.).

Unpalatable truths

The third play dealt with how traditionalism weighs down the 'matrimonial bed', almost to the point of divorcing a couple's 'ownership' over their marriage, and dictating what qualifies their marriage as 'valid'. The play inquires through its story why do people get married and to please whom? Who determines the private space of the marriage? This play had the audience roaring with laughter as a work that uses the comedic approach to create a social critique through theatre. The manner by which old beliefs in the supernatural and the afterlife are utilised as ploys to avoid revealing to each other unpalatable truths by the honeymooners was an ingenious approach to symbolise how traditions of antiquity that dictate the 'foundations' for 'married life' can become demons that haunt newlyweds at the very doorstep of marital life.

The Book of Exodus provides to the effect the biblical assertion 'The sins of the father shall be visited on the children.' Much of this belief is nuanced in the last play, which speaks of how each generation that succeeds the one that birthed it, is bequeathed the burdens of the consequences of the predecessor's wrongdoings. A young man who earns a living as a wayside guitarist, at an 'ungodly hour', falls victim to violence by a trio of disgruntled men of 'paternal vintage' who lament the state of the country and find fault with today's youth for their restive, rebellious nature, lack of indiscipline and disrespect for elders.

Vagrant madman

The play pulsated with both direct and metaphoric schema related to past civil insurgencies in our country. There is much symbolism in the play through the characters. The harmful trio claim to be mourners after attending a funeral wake en route to another. Death and decay seem to be what they are bound to. The guitarist who is the victim of violence and vilification at the hands of elders sees no road ahead. The vagrant madman who foretells the arrival of the assaulters and urges the young man to leave before it's too late is like the buried conscience of a lost generation whose perceived 'insanity' reduces it to 'incredibility' in the eyes of 'society'. Perhaps the 'madman' was trying to reveal a 'higher truth' that is meant to go unheeded by contemporary society. After all he is a madman. But then one may contend, what is so fully sane and rational about this world today?

Writer and theatre practitioner Udayasiri Wickremaratne once told me, the best compliment that can be given a stage play is to know a viewer wishes to watch it again. Those four plays deserve resounding applause. I will honestly say that I'm eagerly awaiting another staging of Keti Naatya Gomuwa. It is a statement by the youth of today to the youth of yesterday who are the elders of today. What I encountered that evening was a powerful theatre experience that seeks to address contemporary Sri Lanka's collective psyche.