Travels with Ena: Yala and other travels – Part 3

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Acts of Faith, British Council, Days of Despair, Ena de Silva, Harin Abeysekera, Ismeth Raheem, J R Jayewardene, Mahasilawa, Nihal Fernando, Patanangala, Philippine People’s Revolution, Priyani Tennekoon, Richard de Zoysa, Romesh Dias Bandaranaike, Shirley Perera, Steve de la Zylwa, Tangalle Resthouse, Tissamaharama Resthouse, Waruna Karunatilleke, Yala

Work at the British Council prevented me from going on all the Yala trips that Ena and her troops indulged in that year. Richard joined them quite often, more than once having to travel in the back of the pick-up so he could stretch out a leg swathed in bandages or otherwise requiring special attention, after yet another motor-cycle accident. Once he was accompanied by Steve de la Zylwa, which prompted an exciting story of being confronted by a leopard when they had gone swimming at Patanangala, though the rest of the party were not entirely convinced that there had been any real danger.

I was actually only once on a Yala trip with Richard, in 1986 when the Philippine People’s Revolution was happening. By then he was very close to Waruna Karunatilleke, who was helping in his work for Lalith, and had brought him along too, though Shanthi disapproved thoroughly, and even Ena found Waruna not exactly sympathetic. His determination, which Richard indulged, to listen to the news as the drama in Manila developed, seemed perfectly understandable to me, but Ena and Shanthi thought it quite alien to the Yala spirit. Richard, who of course sensed what was going on, gradually then moved away from the group, though this may have been as much because of the political involvements that were beginning to grip him, which also moved him away from Waruna too by the end of the decade.

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Post-Colonial Perspectives 12 – Pure Drama

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A J Ranasinghe, Bandaranaike, Bert Bacharach, David Woolger, Electra, Ernest MacIntyre, JVP, Richard de Zoysa, Rudi Corens, Scott Richards, Steve de la Zylwa, Suvimalee Karunaratne, Yolande Abeywira

Scott’s workshops were not the only innovations we were pursuing in the field of drama. After the initial programmes of dramatized readings, we had moved on to full length plays, Richard’s ‘Merchant’ and then Steve’s ‘Anarchist’, and we clearly had a pool of very talented youngsters willing to learn and put in long hours. I realized however that this gave them as much pleasure, indeed more perhaps, than it gave us and the audiences.

I should note that I was able to indulge myself too through the dramatized readings we did. In 1985 Yolande had produced the adaptation of ‘Electra’ that I had written way back in 1970. Ernest MacIntyre, the doyen then of innovative English theatre in Sri Lanka, had been impressed by the script, and was even planning a production. Meanwhile he recorded some of it for radio, with Suvimalee Karunaratne as Clytemnestra – a lady of great grace but also intensity, who is now a Buddhist nun – and this was scheduled for broadcast in April.

It was cancelled at the last minute, and we had to listen instead to music by Bert Bacharach, which I have disliked ever since. It turned out that the authorities had got cold feet, because the plot concerned a woman who had killed her husband, and then been killed in turn by her children, Electra who was determined to revenge her father, and Orestes who was less certain but who Electra ensured lived up to her image of him. Since the JVP insurrection had just broken out, some bright spark in the SLBC thought that the play was a clarion call to the youth to take up arms against the wicked Mrs Bandaranaike, who was being accused of having killed her husband.

Post-Colonial Perspectives 11 – Drama and Politics

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British Council, David Gladstone, Keany-Meany Services, Private Medical College, Ravi Jayewardene, Rex Baker, Richard de Zoysa, Scott Richards, Steve de la Zylwa

Though by the late eighties I was doing a lot of educational work, the cultural programmes continued apace. One area in which we contributed in an innovative and creative way was in conducting a series of drama workshops that led to productions of texts produced by the workshop participants.

The catalyst for this was a young Englishman called Scott Richards, who was introduced to me by a friend who taught in one of the international schools, and had enjoyed some of the performances the Council put on. Scott worked over a few days with a group of youngsters who wrote and put on a hilarious set of skits called ‘What the papers don’t say’. I remember in particular a take-off of how the youngsters assumed the Private Medical College, a great bone of contention then amongst students, had been set up. Nishan Muthukrishna, the most culturally aware apart from Ravi John of the Josephians Richard had trained almost a decade earlier, was brilliant as an academic determined to get his child a prestigious degree in medicine.

That indeed was the problem with the Private Medical College, that would otherwise have been seen as a welcome innovation by those of us who believed in a system of private education complementary to the free education provided by the state. It had managed to ensure that the degree its students would obtain would be from Colombo University. I know that, when I pointed out this anomaly, Carlo Fonseka said that he had been in favour of this, since it would ensure that the course would be of a suitable level. But I suspect Carlo’s essential good nature was taken advantage of by those more single-minded than himself. It would surely have been easy to devise a scheme of quality assessment, essential if private education were to be encouraged. But Carlo was still in the old statist mindset, the Private Medical College was to be a one off exception, so it had to be brought in essence under state control, with state certification, rather than simply state assessment of the quality of the final product.