When ‘acting’ feigns to accept the ‘adieu’ Sitting in the gentle darkness at the Lionel Wendt on Friday, April 3 I witnessed playwright Udayasiri Wickremaratne’s latest drama come alive on the boards after a rather notably well run publicity campaign left no theatregoer in Colombo unaware about the arrival of – Rangapem ivarai, Sabakolaya Avith titled in English as ‘Adieu to acting’. This latest work of UW also had the structure of his drama Suddek Oba Amathai (A white man addresses you) being made up of a trio of solo performances. The talented young actress Subuddhi Lakmali, along with two veterans of the screen – Sriyantha Mendis and Kamal Addararachchi delivered performances that evinced they had each put in much effort to make their acts credible and capable of retaining audience attention for the whole duration of their stage time. Lakmali opens the play with a character somewhat abstract and surreal discoursing on the idea of ‘the dream’. Crafted as an act playing heavily on music and song, this character’s theatrical mettle was welded to dancing as well. Songs and music complemented more or less every ‘point of pondering’ Lakmali’s character brought on the boards, the most significant would be if music is a pathway to reach a dream. Can a dream be seen with one’s eyes open, and whether what can be seen with opened eyes counts as a dream? A very hard hitting question in the discoursing that sought to understand ‘what is a dream?’ The finality of it is that both she, the performer, and the audience being declared as real or unreal as dreams. I wonder if the theoretical basis of the stance taken in that act was built on what the Buddha taught through the words –‘perception is a mirage’. The darkness descended as the dream scene ended and a sense of eeriness wafted from the stage revealing a sepulchral setup. From a figurative coffin placed upright Sriyantha Mendis walked forward with heavy sombre steps in a Dracula grab. It was a sermon from a dead man. An ‘ascharyak’ (a miracle) as gravely stated so by the actor whose principal message belaboured his stance that living people are afraid of what they ought not be afraid of – the dead, and ought to fear what they fear not – the living. This seems to be at the crux of the dilemma faced by the dead man who at first purports to revel in the fact that he is no longer amongst the living and freer than any living person who is burdened by the tedium of living mundane lives. The happiness feigned by this speaking corpse at the point of letting up the act, the acting being over in a symbolic sense, one may say, reveals the mortalities of the character. Like the living he too feels emotions like the living. And for the wrong done to the audience of trying to fool them he apologises revealing his inner garb to be that of a politico. With no remorse he states that he cannot be as lifeless as the audience before him. He wants to live and keep on living. This aspect of the work touches on an idea expressed by the Czech born writer Milan Kundera who says in his novel Immortality that politicians and artists seek immortality. The character played by Mendis nuances signs about such persons who seek to monumentalize their names during their lifetime to ensure their immortality. And through his work, perhaps the playwright too seeks his own immortality, as an artist. The ‘dead man’ ends his performance by saying that the only means he has to vent his angers upon the people is by wishing them ‘Ayubowan’. To live long and endure the misdeeds done by them? Indeed one must wonder what do politicos of the day intend when they bid us ‘Ayubowan’? And one must keep in mind that Dracula, a vampire, is a bloodsucker, the deadliest of parasites. The most unceremonious of entrances to the stage is that of the character of Kamal Addararachchi. The shyness he shows upon being aware that he is on stage that makes him run out of sight adds a dimension of the interiority of the character as though unwittingly bared to the audience. It is in a way a symbolic act to hint at the thematic element the act is to deal with – an irrepressible part of one’s inner being. An element which the playwright manifests as an invisible presence through the physically present role portrayed by Addararachchi. The multiplicity of a personality, and what inner inhibitions and shyness can result in when the need to express is more of a duty than a right, comes out through this final character. The most important of the playwright’s beliefs is built around this final act I believe. The idea of a ‘Sabakolaya’, the personification of shyness is to do with our conscience. The stifling of that inner voice or the pulse of shyness that prevents us from doing that which is not natural – ‘acting’ paves the way for the facades to rise. Then begin the pretentious masquerades and devious plots that turn society to a fallacious collective of opportunists. There begins the realness of the pretence. The heroism of the pretender. It is this falseness of values that society now has embraced that is critiqued by the role of Addararachchi, whose tears of sorrow can play the duality of being tears of laughter. By Dilshan Boange More Details :drama.lk/stage-drama/ragapaam-iwarai-%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%9C%E0%B6%B4%E0%B7%91%E0%B6%B8%E0%B7%8A-%E0%B6%89%E0%B7%80%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%BA%E0%B7%92/
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:27:59 +0000
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