Monday, November 14, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
23 July 2000
Dharmasiri does it again
Kala Korner by Dee Cee
Awards are nothing new to versatile dramatist Dharmasiri Bandaranayake. Almost every time he produced a play, he was sure of bagging a couple of awards. In 1976, 'Eka Adhipati' won the first place at the State Drama Festival. 'Makarakshaya' was Best Production and Best Play (Translations) in 1986. 'Yakshagamanaya' was the Best Production in 1995. And now it's 'Trojan Kanthawo'.
'The Trojan Women', one of the 17 tragedies written by Greek dramatist Euripedes (484-406 B.C) was first performed in Athens in 415 B.C. It was one of his plays where women were the central characters, usually involved in extreme situations. Dharmasiri's production (by the same name) was voted the Best Play 1999 at the State Drama Evaluation (they felt shy to call it 'Festival' this year because the country is on a war footing and festivals are taboo!) recently. He was also awarded the prize for Best Director. He had designed the costumes and stage decor for the play. They were the best too. There were more awards. Jerome de Silva, better known in English theatre circles handled the choreography. He was rewarded for his effort with the award for best choreography. Nimal Bulath-sinhala's lighting brought him an award and Ranga Bandaranayake, got the award for stage management. The best supporting actor and actress awards were won by Jayasiri Chandrajith and Yasodha Wimaladharma respectively.
This is Dharmasiri's fifth major production. He has been active since 1974 when he produced 'Chulodara Mahodara' written by school mate Hemasiri Liyanage.
He made his mark on the stage with 'Eka Adhipati' (1976) and nearly ten years later his 'Makarakshaya' (translation of 'The Dragon') became the talk of the town. 'Dhawala Bheeshana' produced in 1988 was a translation of Jean Paul Sartre's 'Men without Shadows' . He continued his interest in translations with 'Yakshagamanaya' (1994), Bertolt Brecht's 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui', a play written in 1941.
07 December 2008
The Euripides in Trojan Kanthavo
By Vihanga Kusal Perera
Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s Trojan Kanthavo made a few prominent appearances over the past couple of weeks in several central locations. As the news has it, these will be among the last few productions of the Sinhala adaptation/translation of the Euripidian classic. For the past eight years or so, Trojan Kanthavo has won public applause for its topical thematic base in war and for its core intervention with the traumas and futility of war culture. Staged with an expert cast, the play has also won praise from critics as well as artistes.
Euripides’ Trojan Women (or, in some translations, “The Women of Troy”) concerns with Hecuba and other Trojan royal women, awaiting deportment as slaves in the aftermath of their defeat to the Greek confederacy. This, in other words, is an improvisation on the mythological Trojan War – the legendary Greek invasion of Troy. The Trojan War, in Greek Literature, is a flogged horse. It has been the impetus and the inspiration for many a Greek classic. However, Euripides’ “Trojan Women” has to be located as a “literary bomb” thrown at his contemporary Greek theatron.
Euripides is known as the “revolutionary dramatist” or the “modern dramatist” of his era. He is the dramatist who re-interpreted legends and mythological possibilities on the Greek stage. He, as a literary inverter, revised and re-fashioned many mainstream myths, mythological characters and legends. At a different level, Euripides’ is among the main readings in mythology of the “human and the human condition”. As he re-worked the myths of Medea, Philoctetes, the Trojan expedition etc he foregrounds the human aspect and the frailty of the mortal condition in place of the epic Heroic ethic.
Euripides is also noted for his cynical humour – his sardonic rejection of the gods and the pomposity of established drama forms. In his essentially radical art he quite freely characterizes the gods as insensitive playboys. He toyed with mainstream interpretations and the cultural politics fed into such interpretations. For instance, “The Trojan Women” can be textual subversion, as it strives to locate the psychological trauma of Hecuba – a figure marked for being haughty and arrogant- in mainstream literary interpretation.
Euripides was produced before an Athenian circus with a “holier than the rest” soci-political mindset. Yet, his work often presents material that deflates the said superior ego of “being Greek”. “The Trojan Women” is one such instance – for, the play unfolds the insensitivity and callousness of the Greek army at the brink of victory. The plunder, the carnage and the rape which the play refers to, is, then, unleashed by the Greeks. What the play meant to a super-power Athenian audience of Classical Greece remains only to be speculated. What is clear, though, is as to how impactful Euripides was as an artiste – for, his work and even his personality is often ridiculed in the plays by pro-imperialist “traditionalists” of Aristophanes’ caliber.
Knowing Euripides will help us to understand “Trojan Kanthavo” a degree better. For, what Bandaranayake stages for a 21st century Lankan audience is, still, the topical dramatization which Euripides attempted twenty five centuries before. Personally, I feel that the Sinhala translation/adaptation has “missed the bus” at one level, for it resonates a contrived effort made to “classicize” the script. The production unmistakably borders on the said classicization, missing several subtle implications Euripides may have intended in his work. For instance, “Trojan Women” hints at Poseidon, the sea god, to be a semi-parody (at least in his first appearance). In my personal reading (though I do not press on this) even the portrayal of Menelaus is more aligned with the parodic than not. Yet, in Bandaranayake’s adaptation these subtleties are overlooked/denounced. Of course, one may argue that this is not too untypical of adaptation, which allows/inherits “deviations” from the mother text. But, I see the same as an effort to classicize – which does not fit the Euripidian “order of things”.
The essence of Euripidian drama merges radicalism and experimentation (both in its conceptualization and performance). He is also a master of conjuring horror on stage – as exemplified by the killing of Hector’s young son. According to the chronological account of the Trojan War, Hector’s son has to be at least eleven years old by the time the war ends – since, as the ten year siege first occurs, he is seen as an infant at Andromache’s breast. However, Euripides manipulates the myth to make the son –who is put to death by the Greeks– a pre-adolescent. This makes his death more both a poignancy and a horror.
I felt that Bandaranayake has failed to adapt the structural syntax of the play to fit the psyche and tactility of the modern audience. It is not surprising if the audience feels over-taxed by the one-too-many songs sung by the Chorus. No doubt, the songs are in keeping pace with the Euripidean text – for, “Trojan Women” is one rare occasion where Euripides invests the chorus with an active and central role. Yet, in adaptation, the producer could have negotiated with the excessive singing, which, to the untrained modern audience in classics, could be somewhat tiresome. Admittedly, the chorus of “The Trojan Women” is too central for discarding. Yet, their presentation to a modern day theatre could do with more imagination.
Bandaranayake deploys “modern camouflage” for part of the Greek army. The rest, however, are dressed in the “classical” army costume. This hybridity, to say the least, escapes my comprehension. The least I can imagine is that this is an effort to “modernize” the classic in order to relate to a more contemporary reality. But, as I have noted in the case of the Chorus earlier, the “modernization”, then, remains inconsistent and void of basis.
In spite of these inconsistencies, one cannot hold Bandaranayake at bay for a want in the deployment of creative imagination. The production of “Trojan Kanthavo” has demanded strenuous creative zest; which is evident on numerous instances. The staging of an elaborate armoured car, for instance, is keeping in line with the Euripidian use of excessive machinery. Euripides, as often ridiculed by Aristophanes, is a dramatist who “had a thing for” elaborate machinery on stage. Bandaranayake quite firmly echoes this Euripidian fancy where Andromache is brought on stage in a Greek war car.
“The Trojan Women” also reflect a protest and a vehement critique of a contemporary war in which Athens had locked horns with the Peloponnesian Confederacy. The day one of our own, in that sense, conceptualizes a “Lankan Kanthavo”, we may revisit this topic – and with enhanced ardor.
****
Saturday, November 12, 2011
The lasting significance of The Trojan Women
By Piyaseeli Wijegunasingha
3 April 2000
An adaptation in Sinhala of Euripides' play, translation by Ariyawansa Ranaweera, script by Ananda Wakkumbura and Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka, directed by Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka
Euripides (485-406 BC) is considered to be the most socially critical of all the ancient Greek tragedians. The Trojan Women (415 BC) has long been considered an innovative artistic portrayal of the Trojan War and a penetrating depiction of the barbaric behavior of Euripides' own countrymen, the Athenians, towards the women and children of the people they subjugated in war.
In The Trojan Women we also see portrayed in a rather pronounced way, an ancient people (to be more specific, women belonging to an ancient people), led by the circumstances they find themselves in, to question their faith in the traditional pantheon of gods. For instance we see Hecabe, the Queen of Troy, who has become a prisoner of war, questioning faith in the gods as well as man's dependence on them. The futility of expecting wisdom and justice from the gods is expressed again and again.
Euripides' play reveals how an ancient people are brought to recognize the naiveté of the belief in a pantheon of gods with complete power over the destinies of men. The gods are spoken of and portrayed in The Trojan Women as jealous, head-strong and capricious. These facts themselves would have disturbed the more politically conservative contemporaries of Euripides, and it is well known that he was looked upon with mistrust by ruling class ideologues of his day.
Whatever the beliefs expressed by the characters Euripides created, and the beliefs he himself held, man had still to travel a long way before becoming conscious of the fact that he had the social ability to become master of his own fate. What was expressed in the belief in the gods held by the Greeks of the heroic age, as well as of the classical age, if not the relative “helplessness” of social man before nature, including society?
The Trojan Women, like any other significant literary work, in an artistically powerful and memorable manner, adds certain grains of truth to human knowledge: that man caught in the midst of the contradictions of war, whether it be archaic tribal war or wars created by ruling classes in modern society, becomes the perpetrator of the most ruthless violence on his opponents, especially on defenseless women and children.Anoja Weerasinghe plays Hecabe in Dharmasiri Bandaranayaka's production. It is well known that her house, with all her possessions of artistic and cultural value, was burned to the ground by goon squads employed by unscrupulous politicians in the recent spate of post-presidential election violence in Sri Lanka
“Why did they harass me in this way? It is simply because I am a woman. Maybe they thought that I am a single woman. They showed their power, truly their cowardice, to an unarmed and innocent actress. I have spoken out about the intimidation faced by women. I have appealed for the creation of a society that is safe for women ... and I have urged lawmakers to formulate a legal framework that will make this possible ... ”
It is clear that particularly the phrase, “I have appealed for the creation of a society that is safe for women,” expresses the agony long undergone by a woman who is also a professional artist, due to social suppression as well as oppression. Though Anoja Weerasinghe believes that a society safe for women can be created by urging lawmakers to formulate a legal framework, the only society that can ensure safety for women is one consciously organized along socialist principles—where not only the public ownership of the means of production historically necessary for the social liberation of women, but also all the necessary resources for the all-sided spiritual development of mankind, will be available.
The capacity of The Trojan Women to suggest powerfully and vividly the destruction wrought on women in general as a result of war rests to a great extent on the fact that the characters differ from each other in their social situations as well as in their personalities.
Even if one prefers to refrain from suggesting that in the aftermath of the Trojan War some women suffer more than the others, it must be stated that the Trojan slave women (in the play's chorus) continue to bewail their inability to know the fate which awaits them, whereas the women of the aristocracy are able to learn their respective destinies from the messengers who arrive from time to time from the enemy camp. The slave women bemoan not only their future, about which they are in the dark, but also their being severed from the environment and the life which they have got used to even as slaves. That the Trojan slave women are subjected to even more degrading and bestial treatment by the enemy is clearly brought out in Bandaranayaka's production.
The leaders of the Greek army consider the aristocratic female prisoners “prestigious” spoils of war to be divided amongst them. The very fact that they are noblewomen seems to add to the “glory” of the men who are able to carry them home as part of the loot won in war.
Hecabe, the Trojan King Priam's widow, is to become the slave of Odysseus, a man she abhors. Hecabe's younger daughter Polyxena is sacrificed at the tomb of the Greek hero Achilles as an offering to his corpse. Even though Polyxena does not appear on stage, what we learn of her creates in the spectator's mind the image of a young girl of child-like innocence and purity.
Andromache is the widow of the renowned Trojan hero Hector, fallen in battle. Hector is Priam's and Hecabe's son. Andromache, surrounded by Greek soldiers, appears before the Trojan women prisoners' camp clutching Hector's small son to her body. In lamenting her misfortune, she reveals that her life's aim was to be a dutiful wife whose praises would be sung by the people:
Andromache: “I aimed at a glorious name and though I won this in generous measure, good fortune eluded my arrow. All the accomplishments that bring credit to a woman I strove to put into practice in the house of Hector. In the first instance in the matter where a woman gets a bad reputation (whether she attracts criticism or not), namely not remaining indoors, I suppressed my longing and stayed in the house. And inside the house I would not tolerate the idle gossip of women but was content to have in my mind a teacher I could trust.... And it was because my reputation for this reached the ears of the Greek army that my doom was sealed.”
Andromache has been chosen by Neoptolemus to be his concubine and she faces the dilemma of a woman who had been a devoted wife now forced to share the bed of a stranger—one of the enemy who had killed her husband and laid Troy
Andromache: “Now if I dismiss any thought of my beloved Hector and open my heart to my new husband, it will seem that I have betrayed the dead. But if alternately, I turn away from him in loathing I will earn the hatred of my own master.... Not even hope have I, something that is left to all mortals, nor do I delude myself that fortune will show me any kindness, though, even fancies like this bring comfort.”
The women waiting at the camp which is their temporary dwelling as well as their prison, until their fates are finally sealed, descend deeper and deeper into the depths of misery as they are exposed to the barbarism of the enemy. This situation comes to a head when Talthybius, the Greek messenger, returns from the enemy camp to say that the council of war has decided to execute Hector's and Andromache's small son, who if he lived could become a danger to the Greeks.
Hecabe's elder daughter Cassandra had been the maiden priestess of Apollo. Talthybius reveals that Cassandra had been “chosen as a special prize by the Greek king Agamemnon to warm his bed in the hours of darkness.”
In the Sinhala version of The Trojan Women, Cassandra captivates the imagination of the audience as a sexually inhibited young woman whose perceptiveness and intelligence are of an extraordinary brilliance. Cassandra and Helen stand out as the characters that hold most appeal for a modern audience. Helen's situation is also distinguished by the fact that she is the only woman targeted by the Trojan women themselves for hatred and condemnation. They accuse her of being the cause of the war that has brought death to all the Trojan warrior heroes and has culminated in the downfall of Troy
In the eyes of the Trojan women, including Hecabe, Helen lacks “womanly virtues” and is completely bereft of refined sentiments. Her renowned beauty is a snare that she calculatingly and opportunistically utilizes to manipulate men like Paris in her insatiable quest for sensual pleasures and luxurious living.
Helen, challenging Hecabe's view and defending herself, traces, in a manner that would have seemed logical to Athenian theatre audiences of the day, the source of the calamity in the whims and fancies of headstrong and capricious gods and goddesses. Anyway, it is significant that in doing so she blames the goddess of sexual love—Aphrodite—for her own elopement with Paris
Helen: “The man ...... whether Alexandros or Paris is the name you wish to give him, had a powerful goddess at his side when he came. This was the man you left behind in your home, you worst of husbands and sailed away from Sparta to the land of Crete
Chorus leader: ... “She speaks with fair words from a foul heart; now that inspires fear.”
We see Hecabe herself though in a different context admitting the power of sexual love:
Hecabe: “There is no lover who does not love forever.”
The Helen we see in Bandaranayaka's production of The Trojan Women strikes a chord of deep sympathy within the modern spectator through her honest and faithful endeavour to understand herself. Due to this the spectator also comes to recognize in Helen a precursor of many a tragic heroine portrayed in modern literature—especially in the classical novel—who, due to sexual love outside wedlock, is prompted to turn her back on the institution. That Helen had not been happy in her marriage to Menelaus is revealed not only by what she says, but also by the male chauvinistic and over-bearing attitudinising of Menelaus when he meets her outside the women prisoners' camp.
It is clear Helen has not been happy in Troy either—especially during the years Troy Paris
It is clearly with the intention of bringing the play closer to the present-day Sri Lankan audience that Bandaranayaka has incorporated a group of soldiers dressed in Sri Lankan armed force camouflage uniforms into the play. These soldiers act as a part of the Greek army and are shown harassing the women prisoners. The prisoners, while justifiably denouncing the invaders, also highly praise the merits of laying down one's life for the sake of the motherland.
In a context where Bandaranayaka has included soldiers dressed in Sri Lankan army uniforms those declarations can all too easily be interpreted as a defense of the program of national separatism.
The remarkable success of Bandaranayaka's production is due not only to the fact that it powerfully conveys the essential content of Euripides' work, but also because the staging satisfactorily accomplishes the difficult task of generating in the minds of the spectators the mood and atmosphere contained in the original play.
This success is due in large measure to the fact that Bandaranayaka has been sensitive to something that had to be taken into consideration if a play like the The Trojan Women, which belongs to the Western classical tradition of drama, was to be successfully staged in a country like Sri Lanka Sri Lanka
Bandaranayaka was judicious in the selection of the cast too, and all the actors and actresses—some from the Western-style theatre—perform their respective roles with keen artistic comprehension of the individual characters as well as of the particular situation portrayed in the play.
Special mention should be made of Meena Kumari Perera who kept the audience almost spell-bound with her Cassandra—clearly a challenging and exhausting role, lucidly and exhilaratingly performed. Her performance reveals an artistic sensibility that demands recognition.
Jehan Aloysius' Menelaus also deserves mention. Aloysius, in the magnificent robes of a Greek aristocrat keeping up the regal mien, managed to reveal the essential weaknesses of the character too: a man whose craving for a woman provided neither the loving understanding nor the social protection she longed for. Junita Beling's rather low-keyed performance as Helen provided an attractive contrast to the other female characters.
The music is by Rukantha Gunathilake, and here too it is clear that Bandaranayaka has scored with his willingness to break new ground.
The Trojan Women has been criticized as too loosely knit and lacking cohesion. The action takes place entirely in the camp where the women prisoners are kept. Soldiers and messengers continuously arrive with messages and tidings from the Greek camp and the council of war being held there. The audience is made to understand that the Greek ships are ready to set sail for home. The action more or less consists in the women, one by one, being taken to the enemy ships. Therefore the very structure of the play gives it the appearance of a string of episodes, each colored by the specific personality of the woman prisoner who figures prominently in it.
It should be emphasized that the structure in no way detracts from the basic unity of the play, which lies in its main theme: the devastation created by war in the lives of women and children.
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