Review of Udayasiri Wickramaratne’s ‘චිත්රපටයකට සැබෑ පෙම් යුවලක් ඕනෑ කර තිබේ’ (‘Chitrapatayakata
sabae pem yuvalak ona kara thibe’ or ‘True lovers needed for a film’)
Udayasiri Wickramaratne’s literary versatility is well
known. This creative copywriter also
writes and directs plays, writes short stories and novels, is a poet and an
author of several regular newspaper columns.
He also writes commentaries on a wide range of subjects. In short he does many things on many subjects
that interest him.
He is endowed with a sharp mind and a keen sense of humor
which often hide the philosophical preferences that arguably frame his literary
forays across genres. The versatility of
expression and subject naturally finds expression in his plays and for this
reason ‘චිත්රපටයකට සැබෑ පෙම් යුවලක් ඕනෑ කර තිබේ’ (‘Chitrapatayakata
sabae pem yuvalak ona kara thibe’ or ‘True lovers needed for a film’) resonate
with his earlier productions ‘සුද්දෙක්
ඔබ අමතයි’ (‘Suddek Oba Amathai’ or ‘A white man
addresses you’) and ‘රඟපෑම්
ඉවරයි’(‘Rangapaem Ivarai’ or ‘Performances are
over’). We find similar cultural,
historical and political allusions, the latter ones naturally amended to suit
the particular political moment. These
‘tidbits’ worked into the script entertain and prompt reflection but they do
not distract from storyline or theme, a sure sign of a mature playwright.
‘True Lovers’ (if we were to call it that) however is a
departure from the highly acclaimed plays he produced previously. ‘Suddek’ and ‘Rangapaem’ were serious
versions of standup comic acts (with enough humor embedded in them of
course). In these two plays we saw the
performance fractured deliberately. In
‘Suddek’ we had ‘History,’ ‘A white man’ and ‘A woman’ addressing us. In ‘Rangapaem’ Udayasiri gave us reflections
by (as opposed to ‘of’) ‘Death’ and ‘A dream’.
The center-piece was a classic performance by Kamal Addaraarachchi where
the character reflects on the play between real and enacted. ‘True Lovers’ can be taken as an elaboration
or a deeper exploration of the last.
Udayasiri’s fascination with ‘the real’ or put another way
‘the feigned’ (the logical underside of flip of ‘real’) is evident in almost
everything he writes. It is a perennial
theme of course which often finds expression in comment on dichotomies such as
good and evil, truth and falsehood, arrogance and humility, or in more
psychological terms ego and id. The
stage, which is all about depiction, lends itself naturally for incisive cuts
into the subject and Udayasiri in ‘True Lovers’ exploits this to the full.
Now it is true that people are not always who they really
are. There are ways of being that are
recommended, formally or informally.
They are structured, one might say, and where there is structure there
is conformity with the non-conforming ‘punished’ one way or another. That’s part of the human condition, it can be
argued. There is always an ‘I’ and
there’s ‘the way I want to be seen’. A
‘right way’ therefore which implies a ‘wrong way’, both being subjective. When Udayasiri chose ‘Love’ as the operative
metaphor or device to unpack these complexities he created a formidable
challenge for himself for of all things including human feelings love is the
one thing that is spoken of most even as it the most resolute resister of
definition.
So he begins exploring the real-enacted mix on shaky
ground. It is to his credit that
Udayasiri using (paradoxically) actors has succeeded in keeping things coherent
and extracted some hope for realistic pursuit of ‘the real’. This he has achieved by the skillful use of
contrast, almost caricaturing ‘enacting’.
He has drawn from the readily available pool of ‘resources’ that is the
local film industry. That particular
industry is notoriously handicapped by a manifest inability to delve beneath
surfaces. The depiction of love and lovers have typically bordered on the
laughable even in ‘serious’ cinematic exercises.
It might even be said that the cast did it for him. It was actually a double-cast since the story
is about a film obviously, with a director, producer, a cameraman and actors,
props, cameras and lights. Hemantha
Eriyagama, Amiththa Weerasinghe and Pradeep Aragama were convincing as
producer, director and cameraman respectively.
The ‘real lovers’ Sudarshana Bandara (as Wishva) and Theruni Asansa (as
Prarthana) appeared far more plausible than most of the lovers we see on
screen. Indeed even the other ‘couples’ that auditioned for these ‘roles’ were
extremely good. They played around a
minimalistic but adequate set to the accompaniment of Lalith Wickramaratne’s
music to produce a neat piece of theater that seemed light on the surface but
nevertheless touched all the important nodes of human relationships in their
cultural, political and historical specificities.
The final scene is epic.
Reminiscent of how Bernardo Bertolucci in ‘The Little Buddha’ merges the
now of three children made to read the story of the Buddha with the then of the
Enlightenment Moment, the true lovers who have by this time replaced script
with true dialog play even as they re-enact in an enactment of replay on
camera.
True, the ‘true lovers’ are not real (they are married to
different people). True, it’s all
enactment. And yet, Udayasiri’s script
and its excellent rendition by the players make a strong statement which on the
one hand laments the ‘put on’ and celebrates the real or rather the pursuit of
the real. The true ‘real’ that
Udayasiri misses in this grand drama of subjectivity is probably better
captured in one of Liyanage Amarakeerthi’s early short stories (Nandana Uyana) where
one lover tells another, ‘මට
ඕන ඔයාව රවට්ටන්න නෙමෙයි...මට ඕන ඔය එක්ක රැවටෙන්න’ (‘It is not
that I want to deceive you, it’s just that I would like to be deceived with
you’). It is rarely that love (or
anything else) is made of that kind of confession. We can’t get a hang of ‘love’, we don’t know
what ‘true love’ is or rather cannot really describe it. Leaving all that
aside, ‘True Lovers’ succeeds in getting across the simple and yet profound
message ‘things are so much more beautiful when they are real’ quite
reminiscent of John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ (Beauty is truth, truth
beauty…that’s all ye know on earth and all ye need to know’).
We were left asking ourselves, ‘who are we when we are not
ourselves?’ We wonder what happens to us when we are pawns of a script writer (or
structures of power which mediate). And
in a classic out of script impromptu ‘real’ that mirrored the entire theme,
some in the audience would have heard Udayasiri’s little daughter singing along
with the songs in the script. Yes, the
‘true’ is beautiful.
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