- Buddhika Damayantha speaks on local theatre and more
Buddhika Damayantha, a talented playwright and stage director recently successfully performed his own rendition of the play Boniki Gedara 2: Return of Nora. This stage play has been in the works since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and after putting the play on hold for six months and practising for a long time, they were finally able to premier it.
Buddhika concentrates on translations. In 1994, he produced Adhipathiyage Marana Manchakaya, a translation of Samuel Becket’s The End Game. It was the year’s best production at the Youth Drama Festival and collected seven awards. The play was also selected for the final round of the State Drama Festival.
We had a chat with Damayantha about the play and its creation. Here’s what he had to say.
Is ‘Boniki Gedara 2’ an extension of Henrik Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ play?
Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House 500 years ago. Boniki Gedara is another play written based on Henrik Ibsen’s play. This particular one was written by an American designer named Lucas Nath back in 2017. That was the year it was staged in the US for the first time. It’s the second part of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Nineteen years later, Nora is back home.
How did you select the characters in your play?
It was very hard to find an actress who can play a complex, quirky character like Nora. This character is not young either, she is 50 years old, so I had very limited picking. That is when I decided on Malkanthi – an actress I had previously worked with before too. She acted in my 2004 drama Parana Ayage Kathawak and my 2005 drama Mage Putha Enakan. It was not until years later that she starred in one of my productions.
Torvald, another character, is played by Jayanath Bandara. He was also an actor in many of my productions. These people understand me, so it’s easy for me to work with them.
How did you manage to practise the play during the Covid-19 pandemic?
We have been doing drama for 50 years, but we still rehearse the play in various places like in classrooms, practising while sweating, until we are breathless, to perfect our performance. We talk about theatre back in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s and yet; the current industry still has nowhere to practice even.
For this play too, we had to do most of our practices via Zoom because we didn’t have a place to meet, and also there was the pandemic still ongoing.
As I am an alumnus of Dharmapala Vidyalaya, Pannipitiya, I try to book the hall to the best of my ability. But with all the recent power cuts, we were barely able to practise, we had to rehearse in the dark, with no electricity and no fans.
What are some challenges you faced with putting on this play?
The whole country is facing many challenges. There are challenges in drama as well as everything else, yet we still have to earn a living. It’s a fight, but we must protect stage plays, because just like drama, other arts today have neither protection nor support. With the little support we have, we will never be able to afford to rent a theatre to practise, so we’ll never have all the facilities. We will make do with whatever we are given.
Were these issues prevalent even when you first entered the field?
Even when I first started in the ‘90s, the facilities we had back then are not there today. These are issues that not only I, but also the next generation, will face. No one will speak up about it, no one will defend drama, but we will try to raise awareness to the best of our abilities and keep the show going.
