Sinhala Theatre explored in the Seventies

Clearing shelves in a small section of my extensive library, I found quite a few that I had not read, placed there when I was tidying up the books in the main library.

- BY PROF. RAJIVA WIJESINHA

I had put them in a new place to read later, but had then forgotten about them. It was salutary that they were rediscovered, and I have since spent many happy hours with them.

One that I found fascinating was a booklet in a series produced in the seventies by the Cultural Affairs Department. This was about Theatre in Sri Lanka, and was by A J Gunawardena, who had become a good friend in the decade after I started working for the British Council. He was a polymath and, though an academic in the field of English at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, he was an authority on the Arts, and indeed was seconded from there to head the Institute of Aesthetic Studies.

His book on Sinhala Theatre was masterly, providing a succinct introduction to its history with informative details about the various forms it covered. He began with ritual, performed in villages for various reasons, to bring blessings in general or to propitiate supernatural beings on behalf of individual sufferers. From this he moved to Sokari, which also has a ritualistic element, and thence to Kolam, the latter found in the low-country while Sokari was almost exclusively Kandyan. These forms are still recognizably based on ritual, but now they also tell a story, Sokari one story relating to Pattini and Kolam one of three stories, two based on Buddhist lore.

This brief account does not of course do justice to A J's expert exposition of his subject, but it provided me with a lot of information given his masterly way of putting things together.

The Lakmahal Archive 2

Sinhala Theatre continued

I wrote last week of the fascinating books I found on my shelves at Lakmahal, brought up from the Library to be read in time but then forgotten. Fortunately, my attention was drawn to them when some painting was being done indoors, and I started on them avidly.