Leeth Singhage: The one-man show that never stops

To meet a personality whose onstage and offstage energy is both one and the same is admittedly rare, and The Sunday Morning Brunch recently had the opportunity to meet one such personality – Leeth Singhage, the teenage actor, singer, and writer fresh off performing a one-man show at one of the UK’s biggest theatre festivals.

Or perhaps we should say we met Leeth’s alter ego, Sarong Hoodie. But in any case, our chat with Leeth spanned his work in theatre and the arts, of which there is a lot, as well as his hopes for the future both creatively and academically.

Leeth’s origin story

At 19, Leeth already has considerable experience performing. A student first at St. Joseph’s College and then at the Elizabeth Moir School, he was actively involved with the choir as well as any other performance opportunities that came up, from inter-course and inter-school events to working with other theatre groups and directors outside school as well.

Since starring in the title role in ‘Peter Pan – The Musical’ (Cold Theatre 7) at age 14, Leeth’s acting credits have grown to include Ariel in ‘The Tempest’ at Sri Lanka’s Shakespeare in the Park Festival (AnandaDrama and The Workshop Players), Friedrich in ‘The Sound of Music’ (Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Ian’s Really Useful Group’s touring production in Colombo), Doody in ‘Grease – The Musical’ (Cold Theatre 7), and Kalana in ‘Grease Yaka Returns’ (AnandaDrama) at Sri Lanka’s State Drama Festival and at Asia’s largest theatre festival – the Bharat Rang Mahotsav in India in 2020.

The year 2021 saw Leeth coming into his own, making his television debut as Shaan Murthy in the fourth season of ‘The Good Karma Hospital’ (Tiger Aspect Productions), the same year in which he wrote and performed his first original play, ‘QUARANteen’. The ‘One TEEN Show,’ which Leeth recently performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the greatest celebrations of arts and culture in the world, is Leeth’s second original play, and the first to debut internationally.

Leeth began working actively on his own material following his O/Ls, and admitted: “I do love theatre and stage and writing, and I still sing as well, but I would love to expand. My dream is to make it in film, TV, and screen projects.”

SarongHoodie: an alter ego turned company

Leeth’s journey to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was not an especially planned one. It was something he decided to do almost on a whim, and part of his application required that he form a company from which to apply. And this is how SarongHoodie as a company came to be.

SarongHoodie by and of itself is Leeth’s alter ego – something he created as a means to feel comfortable when returning to the office post-lockdown. “It was one of those days where I didn’t feel like coming into work. I’d gotten used to working from home in front of the computer. I really didn’t want to go and I just didn’t want to be myself, so I decided to cover myself up and the best way I felt I could do that was with a sarong and an oversized hoodie,” Leeth explained of the birth of the SarongHoodie persona.

“It was an odd moment for me because I wasn’t someone who wore sarongs much before that, but it felt right at the moment, and then it developed into an alter ego. When applying to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe they asked about my company and what company I was coming with so I decided to make one and I went with SarongHoodie as its name.”

As a company, SarongHoodie is an eclectic Sri Lankan entertainment company producing theatre, film, and music, that for the moment focuses primarily on Leeth’s work.

Putting together a one-man show

The ‘One TEEN Show,’ the performance that Leeth took to the UK, was not Leeth’s first original production, and not even his first one-man show – that was his production ‘QUARANteen,’ which was released in November 2021 as part of the Stages Theatre Group’s Children in Lockdown Arts Festival – an eight-month-long creative endeavour curated by the Stages Theatre Group that focused on youth experience in lockdown.

At its core, ‘QUARANteen’ chronicled a teenager stuck in lockdown with the bleakness of socially-distanced university applications, online life, poor judgement, and how teenagers navigated the pandemic. Leeth compiled ‘QUARANteen’ based on interviews conducted with teenagers on how they experienced lockdown and took us through the stages of the pandemic through a teenager’s eyes.

The ‘One TEEN Show’ was initially meant to be a reprise of ‘QUARANteen,’ but enough time had passed between the two for experiences of the pandemic to be more discussed and universally accepted because it was a universal experience. Sri Lanka, however, while also having dealt with the pandemic, was now dealing with an entirely new crisis – this one was of its own making, and for Leeth, this was a much more powerful story to be able to tell.

“Just like ‘QUARANteen,’ the ‘One TEEN Show’ is very lighthearted even though it talks about serious topics and themes like the political and economic crisis. It features music and dance and there are caricatures of some of the characters that play in the story of the crisis,” Leeth shared.

“The play itself is about rethinking and reevaluating the ways in which we live. There are two symmetrical storylines – one is a teenager coming of age and the other is the country dealing with its own crisis.”

And in a way, the two storylines mirror each other, for as Leeth sees it, Sri Lanka is also going through its own coming of age, which is why it is important to illustrate the necessity of rethinking our ways and how our ways have come to be.

“All of us are affected by external factors and by what our parents and friends think and say. For a country like Sri Lanka, a lot of our ways and stigmas are what the British left us with after colonisation and things that have been renegotiated elsewhere but we still follow without thinking,” Leeth said.

A couple of examples Leeth pointed out that illustrated this concept was how Sri Lanka’s authoritarian education system worked, as well as Sri Lanka’s legal stand on non-binary relationships.

Getting his act together

“Getting into Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a super exciting feeling,” Leeth shared. “But then, of course, there was a lot to do and sort out. And this was happening during an economic crisis. The festival had its own schedule that we had to stick to despite power cuts and whatever else was going on. It was tough to keep up with at the time.”

Leeth, with the help of many professionals and well-wishers, was able to make this happen, and he looks back at being part of such a big creative event fondly, saying: “It was such an experience in terms of organising and networking.”

We also asked Leeth how he handles things practically, especially things like nerves, and he shared that while he did get very nervous just before he went on stage, the second he stepped out on stage or in front of a camera, that nervousness went away because he knew what he needed to do.

Outside of going on stage, Leeth did note that he found preparing for performances stressful because of all the little things that needed to be done, but again, as the performance drew closer and things fell into place this became less and less stressful.

What’s next?

With such experiences already under his belt, we asked Leeth the famous question: what’s next?

Immediately on the horizon is college – Leeth begins studying at Stanford University this fall. Despite such talent for the arts though, he shared that he wasn’t intending to devote all his academic energy to the creatives.

“I have no idea what I’m majoring in. The system is such that for the first few years I get to explore a wide array of subjects. It’s only at the end of the second year that you get to decide. I did Maths, Economics, and History for my A/Ls and I’m very interested in cognitive science and how the brain works,” Leeth said.

“But I’m also mostly interested in entrepreneurial things. One specific business idea that appeals to me is vegan alternatives to meat. It’s a fast-growing industry around the world and I think it can be made mass market so that it’s easier for people to abstain from animal products.”

This next step will not be solely academically focused though, with Leeth saying: “I will definitely continue to act and work while I’m there as well and keep SarongHoodie going too, but I will probably pursue something unrelated to the arts in terms of my major.”

Creatively, the ‘One TEEN Show’ has received a new offer to be performed in New York at its biggest solo theatre festival, NYC’s United Solo 2022. Leeth will be refreshing and retitling the play, putting it forward as ‘Growthesque’.

He’s also working on a micro film series titled ‘BAGUETTE!’ that stars his younger brother. Additionally, he’s filming a version of the ‘One TEEN Show’ to release online and shooting music videos for a couple of his original tracks from his productions.