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| Cover page of a collection of essays on Gamini Haththotuwegama, edited by Kanchuka Dharmasiri |
At some point during a break in rehearsals, Haththa related
a story. On March 16, 1978, one Piyadasa (later appointed
as a Director of the Hardware Corporation by Cyril Matthew) led the gang who
were sent to tame the anti-UNP union at Kelaniya, supported by JSS members of
the Tyre Corporation. A lot of blood was
spilled. A thug named Christopher Hyacinth Jayatilleke was literally stoned to
death by the students after the student body saw some union members bringing
out from the ‘battleground’ a much loved leader, blood pouring from his
head. Haththa had been a witness.
That workshop yielded a collage-production, aptly called ‘Sarasavi Kurutu Gee’ or ‘Campus
Graffiti’, played just once between showers on the wet ‘stage’ of the
Sarachchandra ‘Wala’. It was a snapshot album of university life,
academic issues and student politics, held together tenuously and deliberately
so, by reference to the political turmoil that not too long after bled to what
came to be known as the Bheeshanaya.
One of those ‘snapshots’ was of a student held in a dark
room for so long that he loses his eyesight.
There is an album-flip and the next scene is of the student, dead, being
carried on the shoulders of friends. The
university system closed down a few months later. We couldn’t carry all our dead. We couldn’t even bury them. They were slaughtered in their thousands,
tortured and burnt on tyres, sent down waterways or just left to rot on
roadsides. Among the 60,000
‘disappeared’ in those brutal 2 years was a member of the troupe, Atapattu, a
first year medical student.
Looking back that ‘snippet’ was prophetic, even though it
did not require a prophet to predict what was to unfold. Looking back, 25 years later almost and
almost 3 years after Haththa passed on, I realize that he had an acute sense of
the political moment; he knew what needed to be communicated.
Haththa was an exceptional observer. He had a memory for incidents that had
dramatic potential, however trivial they may have been at the time. Almost every little thing he wove into the
many stories he developed with his players contained real life play-outs he had
observed. He would regale us with such
anecdotes all the time and not really being a student of theatre it took me years
to understand that there was no magic to the genre called street theatre, that
ancient tradition which
Haththa rebirthed in 20th Century Sri
Lanka. All we needed to learn was that
theatre is not recounting of life but life itself, a device made for
communication as well as self-clarification, to teach as well as learn, to
object and assert, to hold ground and recover lost territories of truth. There was, after all, as much dramatic-nuance
in the indelible image of Haththa going on his knees on that slippery ‘Wala’
and worshipping an obdurate and appreciative audience as anything in the entire
script.
His was not the only street theatre group in the country,
but every outfit that followed carried his signature. The exercises, wit, costumes, songs, props,
themes and even (or should I say ‘especially’) the audacity evident in street
theatre productions contain a strain of unspoken homage to this man.
He was a scholar when he wanted to be. He was a lazy scholar. He took refuge in a defensible argument:
‘there’s no longer anyone competent around to supervise my thesis.’ He laughed then, knowing that he wasn’t
fooling anyone. He laughed a lot at
himself and in doing so taught us how important it is to laugh at ourselves in
order to be more effective in fighting the fights we believe we cannot shy away
from.
He taught more by engaging in theatre and through his ways
of being than he did in classroom or academic paper. That said, ‘Streets Ahead with
Haththotuwegama’, a selection
of his seminal articles on theatre and cinema in a single volume, due to be
launched on July 26, 2012 at ‘Sudarshi’, promises to be a treat for all those
associated with theatre and of course those who are interested in all kinds of
histories, not just particular genres of theatre but of people and processes,
challenges and resistance, being pinned against a wall and fighting back. He was, after all, not exactly liked in
academic circles. He didn’t lose any
sleep over it. He won the respect of the
academy anyway for when he did put paper to pen in non-script exercises he
could put pen-pushing academics to shame.
But right
now, as has been the case these past three years, there’s nothing that haunts
me more about Haththa, than the story of the student leader in Kelaniya and its
recounting in the ‘Wala’, because my
last memory of him is the astounding spectacle of his students and fellow
players carrying him from the Kala Bhavana to the Kanatte, along the street as
always, singing all the songs he taught and/or sang with them, tears pouring
down their cheeks. That final ‘send-off’
captured his life, teaching and art: igillilaa
gihin ahasa badaa ganin….rankurulo…rankurulo (O Golden Bird go….soar high
and embrace the sky).
That was
an exit, and the most dramatic moment in the theatre-history of this country (so
far) which made Antony’s demagogic line, ‘Here was a Caesar, when comes such
another!’ seem insipid and weak. That
was enactment, this not so. He was a
man, after all, and not a king; he rebelled against the crown. And he made us all streets ahead, not of
other people, but the ‘ourselves’ he taught us to leave behind.
DEATH NOTICE*
Every character scripted in
the kings, queens and ghosts
the jester and the prince
the pothe gura and
the purohitha
clothed in wit and meaning
comment and critique
armed with song and slogan
literary allusion
and flipping of text,
they were there
on the street
in the street
with and for the street:
and every line and lyric
gesture and glance
and all the props and make-up
that turned player into audience
made street stage and stage street
float like ghosts behind a king and citizen
teacher and student
it is the unscripted theatre moment
the mortalizing of the immortal,
the flight of he who never would flee,
the cremation of he who would not die.
*Written upon the death of Gamini Haththotuwegama.
This article was first published in 'The Nation', three years ago.
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