‘Sri Lanka's contemporary Sinhala theatre stands out as a vibrant space for social comment and questioning. Michael Fernando, BA (Ceylon), DPhil Berlin), Former Head, Department of Fine Arts, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka Her linguistic and theoretical competence, her experience and love of the theater, make her eminently suited to do justice to these plays.’ As an actress, a director and producer of plays in both languages, her love of the theatre goes back to her early years and remains unabated.
Ranjini Obeyesekere is a writer, critic and an experienced translator of Sinhala literary works into English. ‘Moulded in the crucible of economic crisis and political turmoil between the 1980s and ’90s in Sri Lanka, the widely-performed Sinhalese plays translated and collected in this volume ferret out the complex interface between a multiform theatre, violence and repression.’Īshis Sengupta, University of North Bengal, India It will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of literature, performance studies, cultural studies, and the politics and history of Sri Lanka. This volume is a significant addition to the growing corpus of Sinhala literature in translation. She also looks at the unique formal elements employed in these plays as well as their influence and reach. Kanchuka Dharmasiri’s introduction to the volume further details the history and socio-political contexts of the theater of this period, discussing themes such as dissent, identity and the brutal power of the state. Audiences flocked to the theater to watch plays produced by talented dramatists and artists who were experimenting with forms and themes under extremely challenging circumstances, shoe-string budgets and strict censorship.
The plays in this collection offered a political space for criticism, introspection, discussion and protest during a time of suppression of voices, political violence and terror. Herath, Prasannajith Abeysuriya, Dhananjaya Karunarathne, Prasanna Jayakody and Rajitha Dissanayake highlights and explores the dynamic period of Sri Lankan theater and performance arts in the 1980s and 1990s. Ranjini Obeyesekere’s translation of these five well-known and celebrated plays by K. This volume is a collection of five Sinhala plays, translated into English, which were written and performed during the most violent phase of modern Sri Lankan history.
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