Arts
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| Kids,
take a bow A Senior Lecturer with the Faculty of English at the Colombo University and current Head of the Department of English, over the years Neluka has participated in numerous theatrical productions and workshops. Last year she, assisted by Ruhanie Perera, held a drama workshop for children. “Kids at Play” held over a period of six weeks, culminated in a successful performance by the fresh-faced young actors and actresses. “It was wonderful,” said Neluka, “here were kids - who in the first workshop were too shy to introduce themselves – actually up there on stage in front of this audience.” “Their parents were so happy and proud,” said Neluka, adding that quite a large group of family, friends and well- wishers had gathered to watch the children’s debut. In Oxford recently, she volunteered to work with the renowned Pegasus Theatre Group known for their work with children and adolescents. As an assistant director to Michelle Hall, she was elbow deep in their production of “Diver–City”. Today, Neluka is preparing for another “Kids at Play” workshop. The name – a clever pun on the word play - is wholly appropriate as the emphasis in this workshop is on fun. “There are no exams attached to it, no pressure is applied,” said Neluka. Another noteworthy aspect is the complete absence of scripts or written dialogues. The children get together and with the help of their teachers figure out a story, characters are assigned and the rest is pretty much the result of improvisation and interaction. “Even through their final performance, they kept changing their lines and adapting their delivery,” said Neluka, adding that in the event of a student being absent from practice another could step in with ease as there were no lines to memorize, but simply a plot to keep in mind. “We’ve
decided to keep it small…no more than 20 children,”
said Neluka, adding that that makes it possible to give the children
individual attention. “Everybody is equally important,” said Neluka, adding that the children are introduced not only to acting but production as well, from the props to backdrops. “They learn that drama is not just about being on stage, or being an actor,” she said. Neluka takes pains to help her young charges understand that theatre is not just about moving one’s body but also about using one’s mind. Neluka plans to work with 9-12 year olds at this year’s workshop. Starting on October 20, the programme will go on for eight Thursdays from 4:45 to 6 p.m. at the ABC School of Early Learning in Chithra Lane, Colombo 5. 14th
time lucky Banville certainly thought so. In the ringside television interview he implied that this was a victory for high art over slick popularism, a point he underlined by behaving as if he had never before seen a camera crew. "Well," he sighed, when complimented on his prose, "one does try." At his publicists' office the following morning there is champagne for breakfast, but Banville still looks like a man in mild pain. This may, of course, be his natural expression. The former literary editor of the Irish Times is famously - as famously, that is, as one whose novels sell fewer than 5,000 copies apiece can be - dry of speech and withering of manner. "We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures," he says. "Push us into the light and the light blinds us." He smiles, balefully. "I'm afraid I'm not very demonstrative." Banville is called a "difficult" author, a label he wears, after 14 novels, with weary resignation. His books plunge through weighty philosophical debates and his language is, occasionally, arcane: "flocculent", "cinereal", "crepitant" and "velutinous" all make it into The Sea, a novel about a man who returns to the site of a traumatic childhood holiday after the death of his wife. It was praised by critics for its poetry - a man's skin is so tanned it has "a purplish sheen"; a woman's post-chemotherapy hair is like "a cat's licked fur". But in terms of plot, suspense, character and all the other traditional components of fiction, it was, in some quarters, accused of having little to recommend it. It is true that the weight of observational detail in The Sea is sometimes too great for the story to bear. Externally, at least, nothing much happens for pages. But Banville's brilliance is his ability to pull apart the small, external triggers that cause one's huge internal movements - the boy who falls in love with a woman as she passes him an apple - without breaking the surface. "One's eyes," he writes, "are always those of someone else, the mad and desperate dwarf crouched within". (This sounds rather comical out of context; but it works in the book.) The Sea, says Banville, "is not the normal kind of Booker book", and he hopes its success will send a long-overdue message to publishers that "literary fiction can make money. That's very important in this image-obsessed age.” Surely, I suggest, all Man Booker prize winners are literary fiction? Banville grimaces. "Yeeees, the Booker winner will be a literary book. But I feel that over the past 15 years, there has been a steady move toward more populist work. I do feel - and of course I'm completely biased - that this year was a return to the better days of the 80s and early 90s. It was a very good short list and a decent jury; it didn't have any stand-up comedians or media celebs on it, and I think that's what the Man Booker prize should be. There are plenty of other rewards for middle-brow fiction. There should be one decent prize for ..." he pauses, "... real books." Banville did not go to university. He left his home town of Wexford in Ireland as soon as he was old enough and got a job as a clerk at Aer Lingus, the perks of which enabled him to see the world ("I remember flying first class, London to San Francisco, for £2.") His family - father a clerk in a garage, mother a housewife and carer for three children - were, he says, "small people; small, good, decent people, who lived very circumscribed lives. “Leaving the nest so early was hard for them and, when I look back now, I realise how cruel I was." He was relatively young when they died. "Someone said the best gift a man can give his son is to die young. When you think about it, it's true. I was in my early 30s and I did feel freed by it, awful as it is to confess." Banville has called himself a classic autodidact, in that he wants to "show off every little bit of learning" he has. It is why his speech is so laden with literary references; in our 40 minutes together, he takes in Beckett, Pinter, Dostoevsky, Roy Foster, Henry James, Gore Vidal, Thomas Hardy, Yeats and Joyce. He is aware that he can come across as pompous, both in person and in writing, and undercuts it with a Woody Allen-esque shrug. Banville insists that writing is, at the end of the day, rather a "silly" occupation. "I'm very much against the notion of the Great Man, the Great Figure who is telling us all how to behave. Writers are just like other people, except slightly more obsessed." Banville did not think The Sea very good when he finished the novel. "I even thought my publishers might say in embarrassment, 'No, we don't want this one'." But the conviction that he is right and the book-buying public are wrong is rock solid - just, he says, as any real artist's must be. He disparages readers of fiction for their shallowness, their need for sentimentality, and he looks for inspiration to Pinter, who has traditionally stuck up two fingers to the critics and said sales are no measure of quality. He was nominated once before, more than a decade ago, but since then, he says, his writing has surely improved. Getting older and more incoherent is something he believes is good for a writer. "When I started writing I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way." -The Guardian He
lived and wrote free from ‘isms’ Simon Navagattegama was probably one of the greatest writers of the Sinhala language. The mark that he left in the various fields of drama, short story writing and the novel is distinct and far-reaching in its impact. He had gifted to Sinhala literature a different conceptual depth and a special fragrance for its prose, a gift that only the greatest of writers can bestow. Conceptually his prose drew upon founts of Buddhist philosophy, politics, and his knowledge of the various aspects of human life - the carnal, the spiritual and the unflagging questing nature of the human spirit. A complex and intricate depth of vision underlies his work, rarely found in the Sinhala novel. If ever a Sinhala writer came close to the magic realism of Marquez, it would be him. The only other writer left to continue that tradition with any sort of excellence as far as I know is Ajit Thilakasena.The Master is now no more. Apart
from the conceptual framework, at the level of writing too Navagattegama
was superb. Some of the pages of his work – like in Sansaranyaye
dadayakkaraya – could have come straight from the Jathaka
Tales. The style and language is similar. Or an absurdist play might
peep through at us. Or we might be grappling with a vision of fragmented
reality. Yet in all, the touch was sure and unfaltering and there
was a sense of unrestricted freedom across styles and genres that
is almost palpable. Enjoying his own life – that he did on his own terms, which had nothing more or less to do with what conventional society thought. Born near the jungle – he seemed to never have left it behind, even though his advent to Colombo and the art circles here took place in his youth. The jungle came back to his life when he went back to be a hunter for some time after he dropped out of Peradeniya University – finding the academia too dull – and the jungle never left his work, where it is continuously used as a complex allegorical motif in his prose. Navagattegama managed to finally get a degree when he completed a special course at Vidyodaya with special permission. The impact he has made on Sinhala literature and art is great but could be greater, I feel, if the academic establishments give him his due place and the country as a whole recognizes the talent that has now passed away. But we have a long way to go now, to reach this writer. The last time I saw Simon Navagattegama was a month or so before his death at the felicitation ceremony that his son had organized for him. Two things about that event both saddened and gladdened me. One was the sad fact that we as a nation had not come forward to organize such an event – for he, of all people, deserved our thanks. The fact that he had a son who thought of and was capable of mobilizing a large number of people towards that end was a cause for relief. The
other fact which saddened me was to see that the people there that
evening who got up when a politician entered, did not do so when
the writer came in. But the cause of rejoicing is this: Navagattegama
would probably not have given a damn whether we got up for him or
not. |
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