A tribute: Sumana Aloka Bandara

Top and bottom photos show Bandara with his theatre troupe

By Uditha Devapriya

Photographs of Bandara
by Manusha Lakshan

“That the man who wrote these plays wasn’t mentioned in the State Drama Advisory Board’s ‘Playwrights of the ‘60s baffles me even today.” (Sunil Mihindukula)

Sunil Mihindukula was referring to Sumana Aloka Bandara. When my friend Chathura Pradeep broke the news to me of Bandara’s passing away last Monday, I first wondered how many people, particularly young people, would have heard of his name. In the heady years of Sinhala theatre, in the early 1960s, Bandara lived and breathed theatre. If his works aren’t as remembered today as they ought to be, they were immensely popular then. His sole achievement, for those who have the foggiest notion of what he did, seems to have been introducing Malini Fonseka to the stage. Yet this isn’t all he did.

In much the same way Sarachchandra became a product of his era, Bandara epitomised the cultural zeitgeist of the times he lived in. He counted among his contemporaries G. D. L. Perera and Premaranjith Tilakaratne, as well as the formidable Sugathapala de Silva. Critics invariably refer to this generation as the children of 1956, but they were more correctly the pioneers who made 1956 possible: hailing from a subrural middle-class, educated in English, they lived and revelled in a bilingual twilight between West and East, studying Shakespeare, Becket, the kitchen sink realists, and kabuki with as much dexterity as they did traditional dramatic forms. I lamented the passing away of this era when Premaranjith Tilakaratne died four years ago. With Bandara’s demise, the circle seems dismally complete.

Sumana Aloka Bandara was born on October 31, 1940 in Diullegoda, near Nikaweratiya. He obtained his primary education at Diullegoda Rajaye Pasala and his secondary education at Vijayaba Maha Vidyalaya. At Vijayaba, he met Simon Nawagaththegama.

Apparently Simon had been quite a character: “he was almost always mulling over a book.” While the school hadn’t boasted of exceptional facilities, “it empowered us to explore our interests.” Against this backdrop, Bandara and Nawagaththegama ended up becoming great friends: “I sincerely believe that, to his dying day, I was the only childhood friend he kept in touch with.” Surprisingly for Nawagaththegama, however, “he never took part, neither was he called to participate, in the plays we were taken into.” Bandara remembered two plays in particular: Sarachchandra’s Pabavati and a radio drama called Alokaya.

“It was a heady time for playwrights. Pabavati, as you know, established Sarachchandra. The English critics began to notice him. I won’t say I was a big theatre fan but these things did not escape us. On the other hand, we were also exposed to the big screen.” Of the films he watched, he remembered “the Tamil ones the most, since they were frequently screened: M. G. Ramachandran and Anjali Devi were particular favourites.” No doubt these lit a fire in Bandara’s soul: “I wanted to go beyond my hometown, to Colombo if possible.”

In 1961 Bandara did just that. Working as a clerk at the Civil Aviation Department, he soon got to know people who had links to the theatre in the capital. “We watched as many films as we could, given that there was hardly anything else we could do in our free time, but more importantly we developed and nurtured an intense passion for drama.” Sooner or later these lovers of the theatre would get their shot at writing and producing their own plays, and the opportunity came, invariably, through their workplace.

“I was a member of the Government Clerical Services Union. We were tasked with the soliciting and procuring funds. One way we did that was by organising a drama festival. Through these festivals, I met a man called Dharmadasa Jayaweera. He mooted to us the idea of staging original plays. That’s how we formed our troupe. We called ourselves the S Thuna Kandayama (‘S. Thuna Group’), after the first initial of the names of the founders: S. Aloka Bandara, S. Dharmadasa Jayaweera, S. Karunatilake. By then Sugathapala (de Silva) had formed Ape Kattiya, and Premaranjith Tilakaratne 63 Kandayama.”

Somewhere in 1965, S. Thuna came up with Akal Wessa, their first production. The play, Bandara remembered, “contained three characters: a woman and her husband, plus a second man that woman falls for. The plot was based on a short story called ‘Trikonaya’ by Daya Ranatunga, from a collection of stories, Thuththiri Mal. Dharmadasa played the role of the man and I took up the character of the husband, but we had an issue with finding a girl to play the wife.” It seems they approached every thespian: “we went to Prema Ganegoda, Chandra Kaluarachchi, even Leoni Kothalawala. Being newcomers, we couldn’t make much of an impression. We had to fall back on a fresh face.”

Fortunately for Bandara, a friend of his from school working at the Treasury Department, by name Ekanayake, living in Wedamulla, a suburb in Kelaniya, was good friends with a family, one of whose daughters had taken part in several school based productions and won beauty contests. “He suggested her for the role and we went around inquiring whether she would like to take part. Her father was hell-bent against it. Eventually, through some miracle, she got permission, and came down to play the wife’s character to perfection.”

Despite its controversial subject matter, the play became a phenomenal success: “It ran on for more than 10 shows.” Sumitra Peries, talking to me about that period, remembered Akal Wessa as “revolving around an interesting theme and becoming popular among mainstream audiences.” Tissa Liyanasuriya, who, like Sumitra and her husband Lester, went to see every play he could, had gone to watch it with four friends, including Joe Abeywickrema. “Were it not for a problem that cropped up regarding the authorship of the text,” Liyanasuriya noted, “it would have become one of the most successful plays of its kind.”

Liyanasuriya remembered Akal Wessa for another reason: “the girl who played the wife’s role won Best Actress at the Drama Festival, and we selected her for our next film.” That girl was Malini Fonseka, and the film Punchi Baba. So much of an impression had she created in the minds of those who saw her that two other directors vied to take her in: G. D. L. Perera with Dahasak Sithuvili, and Lester James Peries with Akkara Paha. “Lester selected her as the protagonist’s sweetheart, and later cast her as his sister,” Sumitra recalled.

Akal Wessa was followed by three productions: Nidikumba (1967), Api Kawda (1969), and Kiri Kandulu (1972). With Nidikumba – which featured Nita Fernando, who had just entered the cinema – Bandara made yet another contribution to the theatre: while it was far from the first absurd Sinhala play, it was through that play that a Sinhala word for Absurd theatre was coined: “Vikara Rupa.” The term was Bandara’s.

Api Kawda was an exploration of rebirth against the backdrop of marriage life, while Kiri Kandulu delved into unemployment, uncertainty, and the transcendental love of a mother. By then, however, a new dramatic form had entered the stage, and as a result the era of Jayasena, Gunawardena, and Sarachchandra had to yield to that of Nawagaththegama, Hemasiri Liyanage, and Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, among others.

Amidst all this, Bandara recalled, “we faced the vagaries of life as they came to us: periods of intense poverty, joblessness, uncertainty. I took to writing novels and autobiographies. Sumana Mathaka and Patirikka, my memoirs, were published by Godage some time back. As for drama, well, I couldn’t return to it. Times had changed, I had a family to manage, and besides we were not in the 1960s, when it was possible to experiment in theatre and live a moderately comfortable life. We could no longer afford that life.”

If Bandara’s most enduring contribution to the theatre had been introducing Malini, this does not, and should not, belittle his other plays, and the lengths he went to stage them despite all obstacles. “It was a different time,” he smiled at me, bringing our conversation to an end. “A sonduru kalayak.” He may have been facetious there, but he was right. His death hence brings us a step closer to the end, not of that kaalaya, but of the memory of an entire yugaya. The Sinhala theatre, like the Sinhala cinema, has had many obituaries. This may be one among many; the latest, depressingly enough, of many more to come.

The writer can be reached at
udakdev1@gmail.com