Midweek Review
Footprints of Sarachchandra at Denison
UVPA delegation and Prof. Sandra Mathern-Smith meet Denison University President at his office, Granville Ohio USA. Photo Credit Dr Saumya Liyanage 2019.
By Dr Saumya Liyanage
saumya.l@vpa.ac.lk
This paper marks the 64th anniversary of the theatrical masterpiece, Maname written and directed by Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra and his legacy on Sinhala modern theatre.
I was busy, in early April 2019, with preparations to leave for the US for a two-week long creative arts residency at Denison University, Granville, Ohio. A group of academics, dance alumni and a few students from the Department of Drama Oriental Ballet and Modern Dance of the University of Visual and Performing Arts (UVPA) and the Dept. of Fine Arts, University of Peradeniya, were invited to take part in the creative collaboration with the Department of Dance and Theatre at Denison University. Denison alumni and dancer Umeshi Rajeendra also joined the delegation. The project was titled ‘Challenging Borders: Embodied Cross-Border Encounters through Dance and Music’ funded by the Great Lakes College Association (GLCA) Mellon Foundation led by Associate Professor and Director of the International Studies, Taku Suzuki.
Our collaboration with the Department of Dance and Theatre at Denison is a long one. First, at my invitation, Sandra Mathern-Smith, Professor of dance at Denison visited the Department of Drama Oriental Ballet and Contemporary Dance at the UVPA Colombo in 2017. Since then I have had a privilege of working with a brilliant and enthusiastic academic community especially Prof. Sandra and Prof. Cheryl McFarren at Denison. These collaborations brought many academics to UVPA, provided professional and academic benefits to those who studied at the Department of Drama Oriental Ballet and Contemporary Dance. We arrived at the Denison University mid-April 2019.
Two weeks of intensive teaching, collaborative workshops, discussions, and rehearsals filled up our daily routine. Three academics, Dr Sudesh Manthilake, Senior Lecturer Asela Rangadeva and accompanist Ruwan Pushpakumara, and I stayed at a residential home, provided by the Denison University. It was a walking distance from the Dance department. Dancer teacher, Umeshi, our students, and alumni stayed at a two-storeyed house located at very close proximity to the Denison Performing Arts Centre.
During our stay at Denison, my close companion, Prof. Sandra Mathern-Smith asked me whether Prof. Sarachchandra’s daughter had taught at Denison. I wondered how it was possible that Prof. Sarachchandra’s daughter had worked at Denison. Prof. Sarachchandra had several daughters and I did not have adequate information to guess which one Prof. Sandra was referring to. But she somehow managed to get in touch with a professor at the Department of Religion Studies at Denison.
In the meantime, on that particular day, a lecture on Sri Lankan film and culture was organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences. I prepared my slide show and went to the lecture theatre. An enthusiastic group of students were waiting to see me and we had an hour of talks and discussions on Sri Lankan film and society. I was surprised that they had already watched some of the movies I had acted in. They had many questions to ask the teacher. Question, answers and discussions around key points took up at least two-thirds of the time allocated for the lecture.
Thereafter, I was invited to the Department of Religion, where I met John Cort, Professor of Asian, and Comparative Religion. He is a brilliant scholar in Jain religion studies, speaks several Indian languages, and translates poetry from those languages into English. His welcome was warm and cheerful. We had a long discussion about Asia, India and South Asian culture and religious traditions. With that conversation, I realised that as an Asian I had a lot to learn from him. While we were discussing theatre, I mentioned the name of Prof. Sarachchandra and his contribution to the modern Sri Lankan theatre.
I learnt that Prof. Sarachchandra had visited Denison in 1966. When Prof. Cort mentioned that, I was amazed because all this time I had been under the impression that I was the first one to visit Denison as a part of an academic exchange. Further, I could not believe the fact that 53 years back, a Sri Lankan scholar had visited Denison and stayed there for months to teach Asian aesthetics and Sri Lankan dance and drama.
Above all, I could not imagine how Sarachchandra went to Denison because, our experience to go to Denison was long and hectic though we have sophisticated flights and transport facilities. It is not simply getting in and out of a flight. It took more than 15 hours for us to get to our destination with our heavy luggage packed with costumes, masks, and drums. This man of letters had selected a place thousands of miles away from home and decided to share his expertise on Asian aesthetics, Buddhism, and Sri Lankan dance drama with academics and students at a place where liberal arts education flourished.
After a long discussion, Prof. Colt shared two important documents with me that the Denison University had archived. One was a paper article published on Sarachchandra’s visit as a Fulbright-Hays scholar. This old official document had been issued from the Committee on International Exchange of Persons Conference Board of Associated Research Council Washington D. C. It included the names of scholars coming from the Asia-pacific region and my attention was drawn to two of them. First one was Dr Sarachchandra and the other one was Dr Shanmuganathan Suppiah Senthe, a research officer in Biochemistry who used to work at Medical Research Institute in Colombo. But, unfortunately, I could trace neither his research work nor his affiliations.
Sarachchandra was at the Denison University from February 1966 till December 1966. From January 1967 to March 1967, he was at Earlham College Richmond, Indiana. He was supposed to teach and conduct seminars on various subject and expertise he possessed including Buddhism, Hindu Philosophy, Indian Aesthetic Theory, Asian and Sri Lankan folk theatre and especially Indian classical music. The Fulbright-Hays document, to my surprise, refers to ‘demonstration on Sitar’. I wondered how he had brought his Sitar all the way from Sri Lanka. Denisonians must have benefited from his knowledge of aesthetic theories of Bharatha and other commentators. Sarachchandra did not visit Denison empty handed. As this Fulbright document says, for his lectures, he used slides and photos of Sri Lankan theatre and dance dramas, his own sound recordings that he had collected during his own personal visits to various parts of Sri Lanka.
I walked down to my resident hall, thinking how Sarachchandra must have been walking in these Denison trails, before me, talking to students and academics he had met in lecturer theatres, dining halls, and at his residence. I was thinking how the sound of his sitar must have echoed through the Denison theatre spaces, sometimes playing under leafy trees, surrounded by his followers and admirers bringing North Indian Classical music to an unknown world of listeners lived in Granville, Ohio. The Sri Lankan traditional masks he brought to Denison would have been an exotic treasure for Denisonians, slides consisted of ritual practices, dance, dramas, and audio recordings of numerous Sri Lankan rituals and folk songs would have been played and discussed over and over again at lecture theatres here. Now, I realise that I have not started this journey alone. My destiny has brought me here to realize this truth of my ancestral heritage. I remember that Eugenio Barba once said that ‘in my family of professional ethos there are no parents. There is an older brother, Jurek Jerzy Grotowski, Many uncles and relatives […] Ahead of them all, the two grandfathers: Stanislavski and Meyerhold’ (Barba 2003). I began to contemplate how I have lost the connection with my grandfather who has left his wealth behind unnoticed to me and to my siblings.
We had many workshops, seminars, and discussions not only at Denison. We also went to both Wooster and Kenyon colleges in the same region. It was a two-hour drive to Kenyon, which is similar to Denison; it is also a liberal arts University located in a remote country side. At Kenyon, I delivered a lecture on Sri Lankan film industry with special reference to the third wave of Sri Lankan cinema. The lecture was organized and facilitated by a Sri Lankan scholar working at the Dept. of English, Assistant Prof. Kathleen Fernando. Kathleen resided with her husband, a physicist, in a beautiful country house located in the corner of the 10 acres of the University land. Her husband was a friendly person who loved Sri Lankan cricket and pop music. Kathleen treated us with a Sri Lankan meal, basmati rice and many dishes. We in return entertained them with dancing and singing.
Our final collaborative performance with Denison students was only a few days away. All my colleagues were still rehearsing at the theatre, preparing and doing final refinements to the pieces that we were developing for two weeks. I left a bit early to prepare a Sri Lankan meal for them. My colleagues, Prof. Sandra, Prof. Cheryl, Randy (Prof. Sandra’s husband), who drove me around throughout my stay at Denison, Prof. Ron Abraham, Prof. Lee and Prof. Christopher were to come for dinner that night.
The following morning, a Viber call woke me up. Several terrorist attacks had been carried out in some five-star hotels and prominent churches, killing hundreds of people who were celebrating Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka. Sarachchandra proved that theatre artistes and academics had a difficult world and a challenging journey ahead.
(The author of this paper wishes to pay his gratitude to Emeritus Professor John Cort, Denison University Granville, Ohio USA who provided useful archived material.)