• Chamika Hathlahawatte on his latest play ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’ and the process of creating and staging a theatre production

Last weekend, theatregoers in Sri Lanka were treated to a new production which tackles the issues persistent in our education system and their long reaching consequences, with Chamika Hathlahawatte’s ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’ making it debut at the Lionel Wendt on 12 and 13 July.

The play, written and directed by Hathlahawatte, and produced by U.R. De Silva, starred Nipuni Sharada, Thilini Jayamali, Jenat Anthony, Akalanka Prabashwara, Sudarshana Krishantha, Heshan Kuruppu, Pasan Ranaweera, and Chanuka Sandeep. The crew consisted of Sandun Lakshan (production manager), Nilanka Nisansala (production designer), Savindu Owinda (stage manager), and Nishshanka Rajapaksha (stage manager).

Other credits include Lahiru Madivila (music), Dulaj Chamara (body percussion), Asela Nuwan (light designer), Devangani Dissanayake (choreographer), and Yasendri Edirisinghe (costumes).

The reception the play received has promised a return to the stage early next month, with Hathlahawatte sharing with The Daily Morning how the play could change with audience praise, criticism, and engagement as well as the key themes he explores in his work.

His own journey as a director dates back to 1996, when he submitted a short play for the National Youth Drama Festival organised by the National Youth Services Council where he was at the time following a course in mass communication.

A journey in writing and directing plays that began almost three decades ago is today shaped by Hathlahawatte’s life experiences and studies, the most recent being a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Meanwhile, Hathlahawatte has also pursued teaching and is currently attached to the Colombo University’s Education Faculty as a lecturer.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

How has studying up to a PhD influenced your work?

I try my best to incorporate what I study into my productions, whether it’s regarding scriptwriting or ideologies. This completes my scripts, my work. I believe such work should be experimental. Due to carrying out research for my studies, I come across studies done in various countries. These influence my scriptwriting. In terms of directing too, there’s an impact. And taking a theatre production as a whole, I believe that what I study and my life experiences do impact my work.

If we talk about ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’, which was staged recently, what are the main themes you explore in this play?

The recently held ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’ is a different kind of work. Through it, I attempt to question the Sri Lankan education system, which is the root cause of all the problems we see around us. That’s the main factor, I believe: The biggest problem at the very bottom layer is the education system.

What do we give children in the form of education? We give children selfishness. We give them egotism or self-centredness. We give them competition. I don’t think we give anything beyond this. If we really analyse the education system, it’s a competition, with a highly competitive person and a person who is utterly frustrated by this. It’s always these two layers and this is entirely what my play, ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’, talks about. But at the end, when you look at it, the winner hasn’t got anything and the loser hasn’t either.

Global education now accepts love instead of competition. Love instead of selfishness. Love instead of egotism. But it’s love that we have left out of our curriculum. We’ve left out how to interact with other people, how to love them. When you consider this, I think, the entire system has failed. No matter how radical we are, no matter how much we try to break out of these structures, we still end up being stuck in traditional structures because of a problem within our education system, a problem with our teaching.

The appeal is to change this. I can’t say things directly and a piece of art doesn’t say anything directly. Instead, it creates discourse. That’s what I’m doing as well on the issue of the education system.

Does it help that you come from the education system itself?

Definitely. I was part of this system as a student and now as a lecturer, and this is when I started really seeing the problems with the education system. Before this, I was a teacher for nine years and a teaching advisor for three. When I was in these positions, I didn’t truly understand the issues with the education system. It’s when I came to the Edu Faculty and started studying it that I realised.

I once went to Finland where I got to study early childhood education, especially music education. It was then that I realised how bad it was in our country. I believe that when you consider all the issues in the country, the main factor is our education system’s failure to teach us about them. One of our biggest issues is how we interact with another person. Our biggest issues are with human relationships.

If you take a marriage, often, issues arise within that marriage due to a lack of experience. When we are young, we may think we’ll grow up, get married, and fix our marriage with time. But it’s difficult to fix these things when we are an adult.

What happens to us as a child, what we get from home as a child, like what our parents teach us about love, and then, what we develop within school affects our family life as an adult. But it’s difficult to change these once we are adults. They need to be shaped when we are still young.

No matter how developed, no matter how much we read and advance our minds, what we learnt as a child has a significant impact on us. Even though we change through knowledge and reading, we can’t change our attitudes and beliefs. These are ingrained in us and it is this issue that I talk about in the play.

All of us, men and women, are trapped in this and I think that instead of teaching about human relationships, which we should be teaching, we are teaching something else. Our subjects should be teaching us how to interact with each other. You can learn the study material somehow; today, it is all easily accessible online. The main issue is that we teach subject matter alone. But this is pointless. With the subject matter, we need to also teach students about life experiences.

It is this vital discourse that I attempt to bring into my play. I’m attempting to do this in a more aesthetic manner.

The play was staged last weekend. Do you plan on adding more show dates?

Yes, we do plan on staging it on more days soon. We are already making plans for the first week of August and are discussing a few more shows. Once these are confirmed, we will publicise the details.

Our idea is to take this across Sri Lanka and also internationally. It is with this intention that we produced it.

With the feedback you received, do you believe the message you wanted to convey reached the audience?

Yes, I think it did to a great extent. It has gone to the people. There are some suggestions and ideas. A drama isn’t something that is ever a completed project. We must consider the praise and the criticism we receive and accordingly, rework the play as we see fit.

All my plays are like this. It’s a process where we revisit it, rethink our ideas, and develop it as we go.

How does this process improve the production?

Theatre philosophy talks about three phases. The first phase of a play is when the scriptwriter creates the script. The second is the work produced when the cast and crew get together. This is a different work than it was at the first phase as there can be changes to the script and the dialogue.

Thus, the first work is what the scriptwriter creates. The second is what’s influenced by the cast and crew. Many think the production is complete here. But that’s not the case. It is when you present it to an audience that you see how a play changes with the audience interaction. There, what we think about in production sometimes differs to what is given to the audience. This is also something we need to think about within a production.

Sri Lanka doesn’t really talk about theatre philosophy, but globally, these three factors are talked about. A play isn’t a play, especially in theatre, without that engagement with the audience.

If you take ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’, throughout the play, the audience is asked to clap at various points. With this, a greater bond is created between the actors and the audience, and it is with this bond that the play goes on. And now, with the response received from the audience last weekend, we need to adjust the play and take it forward.

There was one scene during the first staging, where the cast couldn’t sing a song because the audience wouldn’t stop clapping. So, the next time, we let the audience clap and only then sand the song because if not, the song gets drowned by the clapping.

This is something that is crucial in theatre. It’s not present in tele and film productions. We have a live audience. So, we may have to change our production based on the audience.

And does Sri Lanka have an interactive or engaged audience?

It depends on the play, the location, and so on. The audience changes. I was concerned, to be honest, whether the audience would clap and so on. Our audiences are not really used to being engaged in a play like this. But there was no such issue. They kept clapping throughout and had a satisfactory experience, I believe.

If we talk about the cast, was there a lot of new talent?

For this play, I decided that, since it’s about education, I should work with a young cast. Education is something that mainly deals with the youth, I believe. So, I attempted to work with a very young group, and I see it as a good experience for me.

We had people with experience on stage as well as newcomers. They all worked together, forming a great bond, to present a good production that came to be through everyone’s efforts.

There was a lot of energy on stage during the play. What went into ensuring this energy remained throughout the duration of ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’?

It took a lot of practice. To capture such an energy, we need a lot of practice. It needs that youthful energy but also practice. This was vital. We practiced for around eight months.

Does Sri Lankan theatre use a lot of modern components or styles?

Sri Lankan theatre doesn’t use many modern theatre concepts. We are still stuck in certain structures, whether it’s regarding script or any other aspects. We stick to the same formats, whereas the world has changed. And with the world changing, we too, need to break out of those traditional structures. I attempt to do this through my productions, without staying stagnant in those traditional structures, instead looking for new structures, concepts, subjects, etc.

How do you see Sri Lankan theatre changing in the future?

I believe that theatre will change through experimentation. There’s no point in being stuck within a script. We need to break out of it, go beyond the script. This is what should come out of theatre. But our theatre is still stuck in the script, in the dialogue. Other countries have broken out of these. The script is in shreds. The dialogue is gone.

So, we need to think about these, looking at aesthetic elements, body language, body percussion, etc., which are all used worldwide. We need to think about how we can use such techniques to present an even stronger production.

This is very rare locally. We still use those traditional structures. We talk about the same issues.

What’s the backing like for theatre? Is there more that can be done?

State backing is very low. They mainly hold festivals and present awards. But there is so much more support needed for an art like theatre as it’s a huge investment, the way I see it. The theatre is a great place of learning. It demands a lot of time and energy, but it’s still a good place to learn. It’s through the theatre that Sri Lanka’s actors are born, its directors are born. When doing television or film, the theatre is a great place to learn.

It’s the starting place, but it doesn’t have a great income. It is thus vital for the government to support the theatre. We can develop programmes to stage dramas, train those in the field, and take our local plays to the global stage. 

We need spaces for rehearsals and also to stage dramas. These are few and far between in Sri Lanka, but also the rest of the world. It’s the theatre practitioners who take it forward.

But I of course don’t wait until the state does something. I do what I can.

And what about venues like the Lionel Wendt?

There aren’t many theatres like the Lionel Wendt in Sri Lanka. When staging a play, you need a venue that is suitable for the play; a place where the actors can do their best, where the audience can fully enjoy it, and where the intentions and purposes of the director and writer are truly achieved along with the cast. There aren’t many such places in Sri Lanka.

You can present a play in just about any theatre, but they aren’t really theatres, are they? The value of staging a play in a good theatre is important not only to the director and the cast and crew, but also to the audience, and the theatre arts as a whole as well.

Besides planning more show times for ‘Kolamba Hathe Thorana’, what comes next for you?

At present, I’m focusing on this play. I do hope to have a festival of my productions towards the end of next year. But at present, I’m enjoying some free time as my studies are also complete.

PHOTOS Krishan Kariyawasam