The art of story-telling

By Dilshan BOANGE

‘Say Kalumaali’ says the little girl Saki played by Shyalina Muthumudalige to Gihan de Chickera playing the recluse like vagabond in the final scene who says he is at a loss to find a start to his ‘Kalumaali story’. Children can have insights and perceptiveness which in their uncomplicated simplicity unveil the eyes of grownups to remarkable truths that would be sometimes, otherwise lost to the world of adulthood. Ruwanthi de Chickera’s latest work to come alive on the boards ‘Kalumaali’ was a project that had devised its language moulds to address audiences as English and Sinhala ‘versions’.

Opening its English production on the 13th of September 13 and its Sinhala counterpart the following day, the reception received from the audience spoke volumes of how de Chickera’s work is well appreciated by theatregoers. In this article I wish to focus on discussing facets of the story Kalumaali, some notable comment worthy aspects of stagecraft used, as well observations made of the works in respect of acting in a comparison between the two versions.

Defining theatre

A work of theatre by my reckoning is a live performance elementally made of actions, words, lighting and perhaps music with the objective of narrating a story to a live audience. As a work of theatre Kalumaali did not strike as wanting in any of those aspects to effectively deliver its layered message(s) and entertain the crowd touching on different emotions. The story in Kalumaali appeared to suggest that the idea of story-telling can at one level be the doings of a raconteur while ‘the need to tell a story’ may in turn make raconteurs of people. After the show one of the things that appeared in my flows of thought about the play was the epitaph quoting one John Berger in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things –‘Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one.’ At one level de Chickera’s Kalumaali brought out a manifestation of those words.

All but Saki has a story

Kalumaali is a symbol whose original creator may be in the context of the play, debatable as to whether it was Saki’s maternal grandmother or paternal grandmother, or something of a folk story from their ‘generational memory’ that has found its transmission to the new age through oral narrative.

Whatever it may be, the possibility for plurality, to acquire a symbol for a story and render it to be an agent for the raconteur’s own story, is a message that comes out very pronouncedly in Kalumaali. All principal characters narrate a Kalumaali story with the exception of Saki, who is very much the story’s dedicated audience and appears to be more the catalyst for query and investigation of the adult interiority.

And then Saki isn’t old enough perhaps, to have her own Kalumaali story to be conceived through sufficient life’s experiences.

One must also keep in mind that the central ‘dissection’ in the story is not of the little daughter but her mother Dil, the former journalist who has become a career homemaker.

Her life being wrapped entirely around the duties to her daughter and the familial framework founded upon parenthood.

In terms of depicting a dilemma of the present age, the career woman made to devote her life to being a homemaker and finding herself becoming dissatisfied, de Chikera’s work may not be the very first of its kind.

However in developing a work that disassociate’s from a brashly feminist mould of complete rejection of a woman’s role of a mother, wife and homemaker cum caregiver while building on themes that a contemporary urban Sri Lankan general audience could appreciably relate to from points of personal experience Kalumaali is innovative in its craft. It is not an Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ made to speak in a Sri Lankan voice. It is a story of the present age, true to many of the outlooks, experiences and crises that mostly urban society, grapple within the enclosures of ‘family life’.

The purpose of storytelling

The art and role of storytelling is a truth that nearly everyone who has experienced a childhood within the folds of a family set-up is more than acquainted with. Story-telling is a generationally maintained ritual within the concept of the family for numerous reasons.

At the very surface level it entertains children to keep them from being restive when their material surroundings aren’t as appealing as the worlds they could escape to when conjuring the images and their meaningful motion to form a story that is conveyed to them through the spoken word.

At another level storytelling is a means to transmit knowledge from one generation to another. And also storytelling becomes a means to uphold the concept of the family, manifest their shared kinship, by passing down stories of their predecessors as ‘family lore’ which becomes a shared legacy amongst the members.

The concept of oral narrative as an act performed individually but not a right owned exclusively by any single raconteur comes out rather strikingly in de Chickera’s story concept, and it is appreciable that new renditions of a character may be told as originals that bring out the storyteller’s personal message.

In this sense what can be noted is that the maternal grandmother who appears at the outset to be the creator of the Kalumaali character sets the stage for the fundamentals that characterise the unfeminine Kalumaali and by which a yardstick is established to measure how far or close to the model are the subsequent Kalumaalis narrated through the stories of the mother Dil, the paternal grandmother, the father Kalana and lastly the vagabond like stranger.

In this regard what I noticed was that the maternal grandmother’s rendition of Kalumaali which of course she originally says to the childhood persona of Dil consequently ends with taking off a wig that revealed an old greyed head of hair and by that narrating to her granddaughter. Thorough this method of narrative de Chickera brings out the idea of Kalumaali as a story that has been passed on from one generation to another.

‘Angry aththa’

Kalumaali is thus a personal story character. Along these thoughts I recalled a personal experience of mine that goes back to my own days of early childhood when my father created an eccentric crotchety old female dubbed ‘Angry aththa’ who fascinated my siblings and me as well as my paternal aunt’s younger son (my cousin) who was also exposed to them.

Looking back now they were nowhere as consistent in their story constitution and development as the stories of Kalumaali, the climax of an ‘Angry aththa’ story being some amusing bungling which a child can easily appreciate as entertaining, like when ‘Angry aththa’ lit a match inside the dark aquarium of the Dehiwala Zoo to better see the fish and got thrown out by the Zoo officials! They were back then to my father’s own amusement as to his pestering audience I feel.

Kalumaali as a heroic ant

However, unlike the ad hoc ‘Angry aththa’ who never lived past the childhood of the little audience she was conjured up for, Kalumaali transpires to become meaningful to not only the listener but also the narrator. In the Kalumaali story of the paternal grandmother Kalumaali shrinks one day to the size of an ant and despite her microscopic stature succeeds in saving from a fire, the family living in the house she inhabits by biting them all awake.

The result is that she is recognised for the monumental service she did them by becoming a person looked up to and consulted on matters of importance. This shows how despite her diminutive physical being she rose to becoming the saviour of the family.

The story ends with saying the ant Kalumaali (who is called Kalumaali ‘koombichchi’) lovingly looked after her family. This conservative outlook of what the life of a female should serve, is delivered as what is true to the outlooks of the paternal grandmother and thus a transmission of her views through an entertaining story to her granddaughter who is, one may assume, hoped in grandmotherly eyes to uphold the conservative status quo as time progresses.

Kalana’s (Caribbean) Marley

Kalana’s Kalumaali is dropped of the colour descriptive ‘Kalu’ (black meant to render as ‘dark’ in complexion) and made ‘Marley’ who becomes an allusion to Bob Marley whom perhaps was a hero of Kalana’s and whose style of beachside ‘Caribbean living’ possibly was the sort of life that Kalana fantasises of secretly.

What lessons for life Saki got out of Kalana’s story seems to be nothing since it was more a case of Kalana embarking on an indulgence of his own and possibly gaining some momentary respite being faced with the problematic situation of his wife Dil’s sudden hiatus to embark of a soul search of her own and travel a bit leaving the husband to take on the role of the principal caregiver.

The loving way in which Saki at the end of the scene puts her hair band on her father’s head symbolises the inadequacy of the father to fit into motherly shoes.

Kalana’s masculinity I feel was made to seem slightly diminished in that depiction of a flummoxed father sitting on the floor as his daughter walks away having ‘dressed up’ his hair.

Dil’s Kalumaali

Dil’s rendition of a Kalumaali story shows how a young girl is prevented from doing what she thinks is best by succumbing to the scorns, criticisms and dictates of people around her. Dil in her Kalumaali story gives a symbolic confession of how she was not free to make her own choices in life, especially one may suggest, as a married woman.

It perhaps shows a lack of inner strength although what her own mother described to her about Kalumaali seemed to the contrary. Perhaps it shows how Dil although was given the opportunity by her own liberal mother to grow by her own beliefs and ambitions possibly did not make optimum of those allowances.

This comes out most markedly when she thanks her mother for letting her be what she wanted to be and didn’t force her to be something expected of others on traditionalism.

It is interesting in this sense how it is the mother-in-law who is the somewhat oppressive conservative. Something of a given in a female perspective when depicting the typical Sri Lankan family setup, one could say.

Yet there is much more than consolation in finding that the life she has hasn’t deprived her completely of what she would like to have for own self. Nowhere does Dil hold her little daughter or her husband as the sole factors of her dissatisfactions.

Kalumaali as per the dilemma of Dil and every woman whom she represents is about figuring out what your life and individuality is (about) in the context of ‘fully realised’ womanhood as motherhood, coupled with wifehood.

Kalumaali turns to a male

In the matter of dealing with breakage from the norm and rebelling against the status quo for greater individualism, Dil’s character is not an advocate of desertion. In fact the drama to the end of it through the character of the vagabond delivers the message of how desertion of one’s children can lead to a life of irreconcilable regret.

When Kalumaali in the story of the vagabond speaks of is said to have become a figure who was eventually applauded for her boldness of leaving the family and was looked up to, Dil contends that in our present society that would not be a realistic outcome, and that outcome would only be possible if a very fundamental element of Kalumaali were changed –her gender. The vagabond admits his Kalumaali story is about a man and not a woman. Thereby through his discourse de Chickera seems to argue from a point of parental standpoint, that the bonds of fatherhood are more severable than motherhood.

The playwright’s politics

In devising the politics of her play de Chickera doesn’t appear to take a hard line feminist advocacy of renouncing the role of motherhood in the present day set up of the ‘family’. Her drama through the depictions of Kalana and the wretched vagabond emphasises the need for a consistent maternal presence in the life of a child. What the play calls for is perhaps more understanding towards the ‘individual’ within the ‘mother’ ‘wife’ ‘homemaker’ on the part of the other stakeholders of the family institution.

This becomes rather apparent when Saki’s persistent questioning of ‘who are you ammi?’ draws Dil to answers that seem to reveal an eroded personal individuality that has been rewritten in the context of her maternal duties alone. Kalumaali in that sense is a theatrical narrative of a woman’s soul search for conciliations between two loves –her cherished family as well as her own personal identity as an individual.

Elements of performance

Moving on to a different area of the work, away from the politics depicted through its ‘dialogic content’ I feel the stagecraft devised and executed in Kalumaali also warrants discussion. Three of the Kalumaali stories narrated orally –by the maternal grandmother, Dil and the paternal grandmother are livened, in the ‘spirit of theatre’ with a mime playing alongside under a spotlight that symbolically shows how that space is not materially on the same plane as the raconteur’s.

The keen listener, the little girl keeps her eyes on the mime in every scene and thus gives an impression of symbolically perceiving the ‘imaged vision’ of the story being narrated orally. This ‘theatrical device’ could also be thought of as a ‘connecting space’ of the minds of the storyteller and the listener.

Interestingly there is no such boy with long hair (‘dreadlocks’ one may argue) miming an act in any way when Kalana narrates his story to Saki. Could it be that de Chickera devised this differentiation in her stagecraft to imply how there is a lack of connectivity between Saki and her father, compared to how she may connect with the female elders? One can also note that when playing ‘Blind man’s buff’ Saki always runs to her mother and never the father.

Shadows as mimes

In the case of the vagabond’s narrative there is a rather alluring ‘theatrical device’ presented through shadows cast upon a white fabric in the background to give a narrative in silhouette of the story narrated orally. The element added a freshness to the rhythm and pace of the drama’s imagery in motion and seemed to also indicate that the narrator is haunted by the memories he renders as his Kalumaali story, which must be said is very different to the others since unlike Kalana’s story the character is not stated as a male but not said to be a female either, but more assumed so since the given was that Kalumaali is a girl. Again perhaps this is a means devised by the playwright and directress to speak of the presumptions in society and how it results in gender stereotyping.

Commendable lighting

The use of lighting in certain instances seemed to serve the purpose of defining the state of an act as being surreal and not entirely of the ‘materially real’ plane, which appeared the case in the scene where Dil makes her implorations to an imaginary school teacher in an empty kindergarten like classroom to prove her worthiness in the eyes of the school establishment and qualify as a ‘good mother’. The stage being bathed in hues of yellowish light set the image as being rather different from the scenes more shaped in realism.

The blend of the mindscape and what is meant to be ‘physically real’ showed how the elements of the surreal were at times woven to the story to create a richer ‘theatre texture’. The lighting artists being Jerome L. de Silva and Ranga Samarakoon must be applauded for their contribution in achieving a stagecraft that found much strength through lighting.

The backstage crew

Amongst the theatrical devices used in the narrative unfolded on the boards was an intriguing method of the backstage crew arriving on the stage as helping hands to get the set in place at times and appearing to be symbolic of a societal element.

Maybe the presence of a group of people from the backstage could have shown that what goes on as a performance is a possibility because of the people backstage. Similarly people in their cosily resting in their homes unfolding their domestic dramas can do so because outside their walls is a community which functions symbiotically to keep the system going, to enable Dils and Kalanas to be ensconced in their relevant routine settings.

Conceptual premises

Another notable factor in discerning the ‘conceptual premises’ in which the drama unfolds is that in the opening scene when Saki runs out towards a stage exit Dil calls after her but the maternal grandmother says to allow her to run ‘backstage’. The character of the maternal grandmother also being a playwright seems to suggest through the text of the drama that the story is to be understood as unfolding on the stage. Perhaps this was a means by de Chickera to conceptually locate the story’s proximity to its audience as more alive and in the flesh. Or perhaps the premise in which the maternal grandmother is to be found is in a drama auditorium? Looking at the manner in which the backstage crew function on stage it is possible the former is the more likely answer. Thereby one may argue that the conceptual underpinning in this regard is that the characters (as opposed to the actors) were conscious of an audience.

Irangani Serasinghe

One cannot help but wonder that the fact that Kalumaali was set to mark the veteran actress Irangani Serasinghe’s return to stage acting after several decades could also have had a great bearing on the audience’s expectations from the show. It became rather obvious when the public announcement made by the voice of radio newscaster Prasad Pereira expressed regret over the inability of Mrs. Serasinghe to perform due to an unfortunate bout of ill health that had compelled her to rest. The crowd reacted with a more than audible expression of dismay. But the understudy Juanita Beling proved to be not wanting in her prowess to convincingly play the role of the maternal grandmother.

‘Dilmacha’

Although the character of the maternal grandmother is stated as ‘Film achchi’ in the production’s souvenir I could not for the life of me, being seated in the balcony hear in either language version a clear enunciation to discern what is stated in the souvenir. ‘Dilmacha’ was what was discernible to my auditory senses and true to my approach of reviewing a drama based on my personal experience as a viewer I shall stick to it as my term of reference; my own rationalising being at that time that it was meant to construe as Dil’s ‘achcha’ taking the latter of the components to be a contemporary urbanised version of ‘achchi’ (grandmother).

Beling was very convincing in her portrayal as ‘Dilmacha’ on the opening night as the English version of the character. The delivery of her lines, the enunciation clearly set her character as one of a middleclass urban background who very likely had her education in English medium and grew up in a home environment where English would have been the more predominant, over Sinhala, being the main medium of communication and instruction. Yet Beling opened her lines in the Sinhala version the following day with a Sinhala enunciation distinctly shaded in the likeness of one whose first language is English over Sinhala.

Dilmacha’s social positioning

Although one may contend that the character of Dilmacha is meant to be portrayed thus, being of the generation of urban middleclass colonial era ‘Ceylonese’ who ‘even learnt their Sinhala in English’ I would counter such an argument saying that a realistic portrayal of such a person who then would not opt to speak in Sinhala, especially in narrating a story to her own granddaughter.

If Dilmacha’s Sinhala is meant to be understood symbolically as for the purpose of a Sinhala version of Kalumaali then that’s a different matter altogether. However towards the middle of her narration her Sinhala did thaw into being more phonologically precise Sinhala. In comparison to Beling’s Dilmacha, Kaushalya Fernando who played the paternal grandmother too can be commented on for discernible difference in acting ‘rhythm and tone’ on account of the language aspect.

If one is to judge the English paternal grandmother for her social positioning she would appear to not be of the exact same social segment as Dilmacha. Fernando was delivered her lines with a tinge of detectable labouring especially when she was narrating her Kalumaali story to Saki. The paternal grandmother in the English version seemed one to whom English would be a second language acquired later on and possibly not in the same manner as the group who are academically classified as ‘natural bilinguals’ whose language competency in two languages is acquired from their early childhood, mainly due to two languages being in use at home.

D’Almeida’s acting

Peter D’ Almeida in playing Kalana maintained a consistency as a convincing English and Sinhala Kalana although his Sinhala performance did at the point of reading a list prepared by Dil read out ‘Saki ge recycling project eka’ (Saki’s recycling project) and pronounce the word ‘project’ with a lower ‘O’ sound typical of the Sinhala monolingual who fails to distinguish between the upper and lower ‘O’ sounds in English phonology.

Comparing the two Kalanas, who like Dilmacha and the paternal grandmother were played by the same actor in both versions, the Sinhala Kalana did sport a tonal distinction in his diction as one who is possibly more attuned to English language medium communication.

At the point when he sings the line from the Bob Marley song ‘No woman no cry’ to Saki, in the course of his Kalumaali story, D’Almeida does give the impression in that switch of codes (from Sinhala to English) that he would be more in his element speaking in English.

But in terms of his rhythm and pace of delivery there was no real notable difference as compared to Fernando since she seemed very effortless in delivering a convincing lingual element in her Sinhala performance. This difference was notable on the second day observing the manner of ease with which diction came off her tongue narrating her Kalumaali story to Saki.

Two strata for two versions?

The two productions seem to project two different social strata for the family detectable through a few things of which one is where in the Sinhala version Dil addresses the woman who changes clothes inside a camping tent as ‘akka’ (elder sister) and the two engage in a dialogue where rather comfortably Dil is addressed as ‘nangi’ (younger sister).

These mannerisms are not seen in the English version and in the context of prevalent norms in our layered society such a dialogue would be unlikely to occur if the Sinhala Dil were of the same stratum distinguishable in the English Dil seeing as how the woman spoken too is a complete stranger.

A comparison of Dils

Between the two Dils I must state there was a marked difference to the two performances due to the casting. Lakmini Seneviratne played Dil in the English version while her Sinhala counterpart was portrayed by Nadie Kammallaweera. Seneviratne depicted the required role in terms of the characteristics of the presumed socio-economic class of Dil (on the basis that she is the daughter of the Dilmacha played by Beling) with ease and was very convincing. Kammallaweera on the other hand did not come out as quite the expectation of a daughter of the type of Dilmacha brought to life by Beling.

At certain points the insertion of English words (‘code mixing’ as it is called academically) by Kamallaweera didn’t seem to occur with great ease, as for instance D’Almeida’s acting accomplished, to a notable extent. This seemed very pronounced to me at the point when in the surreal like scene where Dil implores to an imaginary school teacher and blurts out ‘shit’ as a swear word.

The word for all its purpose and conceptual soundness given the situation of a slippage of an improper, indecorous word for a mother, did seem in the Sinhala version slightly out of place and not in harmony with the delivery by Kammallaweera since the switch projected it as tonally incongruous, and laboured.

Effective projection and overacting

In comparison to Seneviratne, Kamallaweera did not project a persona as impactful. Between the two the English Dil had a voice that carried better and was more ‘acoustically manoeuvred’. What must be kept in mind is that the stage unlike screen acting does not afford actors the luxury of having their facial expression caught in tight close-ups and projected to viewers to perceive the fine nuanced movements.

Their size to the viewer stays the same, and thus places upon the actors the great burden of finding the fine skill of balancing their expressions and gestures between effective projection and overacting.

In the scene where Dil implores to the imagined teacher Seneviratne’s performance was in keeping with what could be expected rather entertaining from the character of a grownup mother. The Sinhala Dil however clearly seemed ‘frantic’ as opposed to ‘anxious and eager to please’ as the English Dil, albeit still a behaviour that was not mean to be complimentary to Dil’s status, but possibly a symbolic demeaning suffered for her child in the ‘enterprise’ of being a ‘good mother’.

Seneviratne’s prowess

Seneviratne’s projection of her gestures complemented her verbal delivery in a remarkable manner and was more sharp in the manner she subtly spaced her gestures and words natural to theatricalising a depiction of human behaviour and thereby maximising the ‘legibility’ of her performance. The Sinhala counterpart was unfortunately too rushed at times in her projection of her physical persona as a being of motion and dialogue.

Audience reactions too indicated that Seneviratne was more impactful as her performance elicited more laughter than Kammallaweera’s performance. In short Seneviratne was markedly the more entertaining one of the two. I have seen Seneviratne act sometime back in the Sinhala translation of Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding titled ‘Sanda langa maranaya’, and do believe her prowess in Sinhala theatre to be above mediocre. In a comparison of the two productions I am personally of the opinion that de Chickera made a poor casting decision in respect of Dil’s character in the Sinhala version.

The two little debutantes

Kalumaali saw the debut of two young actresses to the stage playing the role of Saki in the two productions. Both showed a talent that was naturally theatre savvy and surely beguiled their respective audiences. Shyalina Muthumudalige who played the English Saki had a more projected persona between the two, her voice being sharper as well. She also brought out an endearing ‘forwardness’ that seemed very apt to what would be expected from a more urban child whose home environment is presumably more exposed to western outlooks and mannerisms. In comparison Sahlah Anees brought to life a Saki in the Sinhala version who was more girlishly childlike.

The two child actresses who show much promise appeared to know how to capitalise on their innate ‘attraction points’ and highlight them, such as Muthumudalige giving enhancement to lines that brought out a thread of precociousness and Anees presenting her persona as more dollish.

Produced by Hasini Haputhanthri Prasad Pereira and Sandamali Wijeratne this project by Stage theatre group had notable strength from corporate sponsors who should be cheered for support for the performing arts in Sri Lanka which need wider patronage from the mercantile sector in terms of financial assistance.

Ruwanthi de Chickera’s script surely had been a work that had been painstakingly crafted and then paved the way for an even more onerous journey of bringing the script to life on the boards.

Kalumaali should be applauded for many reasons, amongst which is, the mettle is possess as being a work that strikingly captures a facet of contemporary Sri Lankan thinking through the magic of theatre.