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| Sunday, 7 December 2003 |
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The entrances and exit of Dhamma Jagoda Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake The refreshing appearance of Dinidu Jagoda in Sumithra Peiris' film 'Sakman Maluwa' rekindles memories of his father Dhamma Jagoda, one of the most accomplished theatre craftsmen of his time. This article was written by the present writer soon after Dhamma Jagoda's death in February 1988 in the 'The Island' in the column 'Sidelines by Andare'. To say that somebody's death is like a dream is a cliche but there are times when life (and even more perhaps death) finds its most expressive utterance in cliche. How else can one convey the suddenness of the shock that accompanies an unexpected death, the cold realisation that somebody who was alive and well only days or even perhaps minutes before has been struck down never to rise again. When people like Dhamma Jagoda die prematurely at the very efflorescence of their talents how else is but one to express oneself except in cliche? As a theatre man and later a pioneer of television in Sri Lanka, Dhamma Jagoda was the complete professional. As this word is normally applied there is a certain aridity surrounding it as if a professional is somebody who has all the knowhow but does not know where to apply it. Dhamma Jagoda, however, had no such problems. He knew what he had to do and how to do it. He became a professional because first he wanted to master all the skills of his calling. Whether it was the old folk theatre as represented by nadagam and kolam or the latter-day stylised drama pioneered by Prof. Sarachchandra, whether it was naturalistic drama or absurd drama or whether it was the new-wave European and American theatre such as the theatre of cruelty, Dhamma Jagoda had both the theory and the practice of drama at his finger tips. With his boundless vigour and intellectual curiosity Dhamma Jagoda in the 1970's was the bright epitome of the totally involved theatre man straining at the leash of the proscenium-archbound Sinhala theatre. Those were the heady days of the Lionel Wendt Ranga Shilpa Shalika, that brave experiment in fostering a new generation of the Sinhala theatre. Dhamma Jagoda belonged to the golden afternoon of the Lionel Wendt Art Centre Club - the time when the dominantly Sinhala-nurtured intelligentsia of plays and films mingled with the English-centred intelligentsia worshipping at the Lionel Wendt - the time of Reggie Perera and Chitrasena, Karen Breckenridge and Henry Jayasena - the time of 'Hunuvataye Kathawa' and the plays of Ernest Macintyre. Through the Ranga Shilpa Shalika Dhamma Jagoda introduced new concepts and methods to a Sinhala theatre which had been swinging for too long between the two opposite poles of stylised theatre and naturalistic drama. Like all good dramatists who started in the 1960's Dhamma Jagoda too began with Tennesse Williams but by the 1970's he had considerably widened his horizons. By then he was talking authoritatively of the theatre of cruelty and the American underground theatre, of Artaud and Meyerhold, preoccupations which compelled him to enter into a correspondence with 'Viranga', the long-standing arts columnist of the 'Daily News' who was a towering presence on the theatre scene then. Turbulence Jagoda's students at the Shalika learnt fast. At a time of turbulence and clash of opinions, with the 1971 insurrection suppressed and the United Front Government itself caught up in turmoil the time was ripe for an assault on the proscenium arch and the complacencies bound up with it. Jagoda himself had set the pace with his 'Malawung Negitiy', an underground play inspired by the April insurgency which was privately shown in Colombo after the Public Performances Board refused to permit wider exposures. At the 1977 drama festival Jagoda's pupils stormed the Lumbini with lusty war cries. Parakrama Niriella, whom we know today as perhaps the brightest of the television dramatists, won the award for the best script for his 'Sekkuwa', a satire on post-independence politics inspired by Jagoda's methods of incorporating the robust techniques of the folk theatre to modern drama. Tilak Gunawardena, another television drama producer, had 'Kontha Nona', a short play scripted by another Jagoda pupil Saman Susiri Lokumarambe, based on a lyric poem by Mahagama Sekera. Consciousness Dhamma Jagoda, however, was not entirely happy with the way in which the larger Sinhala theatre was moving during that decade. He believed in a socially-conscious theatre rooted in the actualities of life but in conveying that consciousness in terms of valid theatrical art. The vocabulary of the body which he believed in had no basic conflict with the language of social commitment and conscience but he was rightly contemptuous of the raw and naive expression which this consciousness was finding in the theatre in the 1970s particularly under the auspices of the state-sponsored drama festival which had unfurled the banner of socialist realism. And so for a time Dhamma Jagoda withdrew leaving the centre stage to the socialist moralisers and started to draw up a drama syllabus for schools under that other brave experiment the educational reforms introduced by the then Secretary to the Ministry of Education Dr. Premadasa Udagama. In retrospect we now realise that Dhamma Jagoda was right. The spate of protest plays which Gunadasa Amarasekera was to call 'papadam plays' dried up on the inhospitable shores of post-1977 society where the socialist battalions had been put to rout by the rejuvenated new Right. Lacking any life of their own either in content or form they had been merely kept going by the patronage offered by state drama festivals. But Dhamma Jagoda did not remain quiescent during this period of semi-hibernation. Rejecting the proscenium arch and the middle class audience he produced a few plays which were shown to workers and others at a time when he had a loose association with the Revolutionary Communist League which had an influence on some theatre and film people at this time. Ideological This was an intensely ideological period in Dhamma Jagoda's life. He was exploring new ways of looking at life and art and was trying to crystallise his reading and thinking in a coherent vision. His musings found expression in the programme 'Rupana', which Tilak Jayaratne produced for the educational service of the SLBC. Jagoda was the moderator and this programme brought together an astonishing array of academics, writers, theatre and film people and journalists in a heady 30-minutes of discourse. Jagoda moderated the programme with an impressive authority and a range of interests which managed to bring within the ken of the Sinhala audiences a considerable spectrum of new ideas, concepts and ways of looking at reality. What was also impressive was how moderator and producer managed to make use of the opportunity to the maximum and amazingly extend the bounds of the freedom available to them. Sometimes some of the ideas expressed in 'Rupana' were positively subversive but they got away with it. Turning point This was the turning point in Dhamma Jagoda's life. He had been grappling with the major issues of life and art and coming closer to the world view of Marxism. But he was too independent a spirit to be bound by party orthodoxies, even the orthodoxies of Trotskyite: party which paradoxically enough opposed all bureaucratic orthodoxies. Dhamma Jagoda did not swallow Marxism whole but I believe he was healthily influenced by it. Moreover he perhaps saw that new horizons were opening up. He felt the time had come to break out of the narrow and self-perpetuating intellectual cabal and its critical carping. I remember the night at the Shalika at Narahenpita (where we had retired after a 'Rupana' recording) when Dhamma announced that he would be joining the Rupavahini. To his political mentors that was the ultimate act of renegadism. But to Dhamma Jagoda with his boundless vigour and intellectual curiosity it was a chance to carry popular culture in a new and desirable direction. He was not long with Rupavahini but he did enough to justify his decision. We needed people like him during the formative years of this new medium and he certainly played his part to the hilt. The mastery of the medium, the maturity and above all the basic decency which we have come to expect from Rupavahini teledramas are the work of Dhamma and his co-producers some of whom are his pupils. Dhamma Jagoda has the vision and the equipment to play a pioneering role in television and his own tele-dramas like 'Sandaka Kathava' and 'Mihikathage Daruwo', the latter with its strong autobiographical flavour, show his talents to the full. In this second tele-drama perhaps he had tried to put too many eggs into one basket but his basic theme of the conflict between the true artist and the charlatan remains a powerfully valid comment on our times and all the more valid for having been projected over a medium like television which often hawks the charlatans. Impressive As a personality Dhamma Jagoda was both formidable and impressive. With his wiry good looks and his erect bearing he had all the intellectual and professional pride of a true artist. Sri Lankan drama and letters have been greatly impoverished by his premature demise at a time when the country needs honest, courageous and true people to expose the sham and the idolatry which passes off for art today. A life of great promise has been cut short. The curtain has come down but there is no applause for him today. The spectators are silent in their seats, their heads bowed in unutterable grief, unwilling to reconcile themselves to the fact that Dhamma's life has closed. |
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