Nandasiri Jasentuliyana
There was one other leading figure from the cultural world that I came to know very well, particularly through my association with Namel. It was none other than Henry Jayasena, acclaimed as an outstanding stage actor, film star, writer, producer, director, and translator, all rolled in to one. He is a legendary artiste of our times.
I first met Henry in the early sixties when I happened to be visiting Colombo, and had the good fortune to see his production of ‘Kuveni’ (demon queen) in which he sang the mesmerizing song ‘Andakaren’ (from darkness) displaying his prowess as a singer. When the play was over, I went backstage to congratulate him for the excellent production of the play. When he learned that I had just come from Canada and made the effort not to miss his play, he joined into a cordial conversation with me. Ever since then we have been friends. Almost on every visit I made to Colombo I have seen him, and he was a guest in my home in New York.
Henry Jayasena’s initial foray into the cultural milieu was as a stage actor in 1950s, and he blossomed in Prof. Ediriweera Saratchchandra’s famed production of ‘Maname’ in 1956. It was originally staged at the Peradeniya campus of the University of Ceylon on the occasion of the inauguration of the now famous open air theater in the campus. Henry took the lead role as Prince Maname in this stylized dance drama. The drama woven around a love story, is well known for its music highlighted by the song ‘Premayen Mana Ranjitave’ (mind is full of joy with love), that has been timeless and appreciated by the populace at large.
On its 50th anniversary, Maname was staged in Los Angeles by Prof. Sarathchandra’s wife Lalitha, in 2006. In a program note for the occasion, I wrote:
“All the critics hailed Maname as a new genre of theater in Sri Lanka that laid the foundation for a nationalistic identity creating a cultural uniqueness. The style of the play was Nadagam and it created eastern resonance. It was appreciable by everybody, the rural or educated folks of the city, and indeed anywhere in the world. Sarathchandra created a universal language of theater through the vehicle of Nadagam musicality. While the genre of Nadagam was prevalent in the country for centuries in the form of loose theater, which the rural folks employed for their mundane entertainment, Sarathchandra extracted the essence of the Nadagam Story after years of research and being with the rural folks for years travelling from village to village collecting data and making comparisons of styles and different modes of presentation. After such a period of toil he created a great drama in Maname out of the raw material which not only moved the audiences to tears but forced them to be gripped in the situations that he created in the play. He harnessed in it humanity instilled depth into its characters, and impressed as to what meaningful and serious theater is. By this means he demonstrated the possibility of creating a national cultural identity in spirit of theater in Sri Lanka. Its approach was novel and appreciable by everyone, its theme and quality of humaneness impregnated the minds of the audiences with emotive feelings penetrating into the roots of cultural milieu of our country. Thus, Sarathchandra ushered in a new era in the theater scene with the production of Maname, which after 50 years, still runs to capacity anywhere it is staged in the country.”
A year or so after Henry acted in Maname, he acted in the jewel of an operetta ’Hasthi Kantha Manthare’ (Elephant Charm), set to the haunting music of Maestro Amaradeva. It was also produced by Prof. Sarathchandra.
Shortly after, in the sixties, Henry began a stellar career as a producer and director of stage plays. Of the dozen or so of his well-known productions I was fortunate to see six of the best: ‘Janelaya’ (window); ‘Manaranjana Vada Wardane’ (glorious strikes); ‘Ahas Maliga’ (palaces in the sky); ‘Apata Puthe Magak Nathe’ (we have no solace son); and his crown jewel ‘Hunuwataye Kathawa’ (Berthold Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle); produced in 1967, in which he gave a brilliant performance as Judge Azdek.
At the time he visited me in New York, the ‘Chalk Circle’ was staged at the famous Lincoln Center Playhouse. I thoroughly enjoyed the play in his company because I had many insights into the production, which otherwise I would never have appreciated. The next night, after dinner, when he was lounging on an armchair, I asked him to sing the melodies from his version of the play. I still have a tape that I recorded with him strumming the tunes, tapping on the chair.
Long after Henry had returned to Colombo there was a subsequent production of the ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ in New York. The critic who reviewed the production in the New York popular newspaper “Village Voice” happened to have seen Henry’s production in Colombo. In his review, he referred to Henry’s production and concluded the “producers such as Henry Jayasena should be invited to the United States to show how an engrossing play should be produced”.
Henry had come to the United States on a travel grant offered by the U.S. government to visit playhouses and meet dramatists, mainly in university campuses and small towns. I took the opportunity to see a couple of Broadway plays in his company. All the time he was absorbing anything worth noting, while he was critical of the superficial or added embellishments that made Broadway productions attractive to a larger audience. I was lucky to have watched in his company, Samuel Becket’s existential classic ‘Waiting for Godot’. The incisive comments he later made, helped me understand and appreciate the wonderful production and the great play.
One play he admired and enjoyed was Neil Simon‘s production of ‘Sunshine Boys‘, a hilarious comedy focusing on a pair of cantankerous vaudevillian actors who did not get along with each other off stage, while being a perfect pair on stage. It had just opened in the early seventies when Henry and I went to see it. Later, it had a run of more than five hundred consecutive shows and a similar run when it was revived in the nineties. It was also made into a film and television hit.
In the midst of his writing, producing and acting in stage productions, Henry also became a leading film star. Among the many films he acted in ’Gam Peraliya’ (revolt in the village), takes pride of place. Henry played the leading role as “Piyal” an English teacher who falls in love with his student Nanda. The role won him an award for acting, and the movie won the best film award at the national awards ceremony.
Henry started his career as an Assistant Teacher in English in a primary school in a far off village near Nuwara Eliya. That is where he began writing his first play. Then he served in the clerical service in the Public Works Department in Colombo for many years, where he wrote most of his well-known plays. I once visited him at his office to collect an invitation to one of his plays which he had insisted I should see, although I was due to leave the Island later that same night. He later served as Deputy Director of the National Youth Services Council in charge of the Arts Division. During that period, he was a star on the silver screen. Finally, before retirement from the government service, he served as Deputy Director General of the National Television Corporation (Rupavahini), overseeing the programming Division.
Henry was equally conversant in Sinhala and English, writing in both with the greatest of ease. His wife, Manel, was an equally talented actress and singer with a pleasing voice. She acted in most of Henry’s plays, giving particularly memorable performances in ‘Kuveni’ and ‘Hunuvatiye Kathawa’. She went on to become a popular teledrama actress.
In more recent years I have been in touch with Henry by email. I have received perceptive comments of the cultural scene of the day. Sometime after 2008, I had mentioned to him the recently published trilogy of Sri Lankan historical fiction (Freedom at Last in Paradise’, ‘Serendipity of Andrew George’ and ‘Peace at last in Paradise’), written by Dr. Ananda Guruge. Henry had seen the review of the publications I had written in the Sunday Observer newspaper in Sri Lanka. In the review, that I titled ‘Gems of Historical Novels,” I noted that: “only a person of the caliber of Dr. Ananda Guruge, diplomat, national and international civil servant, academician, scholar and renowned author could have given life so vividly to the social and cultural milieu of Sri Lankan society in the last century and a half, blending all his experiences in bringing forth a captivating trilogy which will rank among the best of literary classics produced by a Sri Lankan author.” Detecting his interest in reading them, I sent him copies which I received from Dr. Guruge in Los Angeles through my sister in law Sujatha. He was most appreciative when she went to deliver them to him at his home. He sent me a note of thanks and after several weeks followed up with a note to say that he had started reading them, and once he finished, he would send me his impressions.
It was not long after that I received the sad news of his demise. He was a man who had contributed to resurrecting the Sinhala Theater along with Prof. Sarathchandra and a handful of others, at a time when it was a vanishing art. Henry was a fine human being whom I was privileged to know. Just about two years before his death in 2010, he treated us to his memoirs ‘Play is the Thing’ which gives the reader insights to the man and his work.
I have been interested in the theater since my young days. My fortunate association with Henry and his wife Manel, Namel Weeramuni and his wife Malini, Prof. Ediriweera Saratchchandra and, of course, Gamini Hattatuwagama has honed my appreciation of the Sinhala theater, dance, drama, and music of all forms. Other who helped sustain my interest in theater included the prominent film and stage actress Nita Fernando, writer and critic A.J. Gunawardane, who for a short while was my roommate in New York while he was on a fellowship in the United States, and my fleeting association with the likes of actor producer Dhamma Jagoda. In later years, while in the United States, my close association with Karen Breckenridge, who was serving in the diplomatic service of Sri Lanka in New York, was important in continuing my interest. He was a versatile actor and connoisseur of Sinhala and Western theater.
There are others, who now reside in Los Angeles, like Karu Karunaratne, who acted as the ‘Vaddha’ in the original cast of ‘Maname’ (was an official at the Sri Lanka Mission to the U.N.), and his wife Nimala who was the lead actress in the Hasthi Kantha ‘Manthare’; playwright producer Somarathna Dissanayake of ’Muvan Palessa’ fame; Badrajee Jayatilake; Ananda Markalanda and the committed work of a host of talented young artists in the United States, who continue to help me sustain my interest in the Sinhala theater in spite of all the years I have been away from the Island.
I continue to enjoy, learn and savor my close association with the Arts that my friends inculcated in me. Especially pertinent are the remarkable quotes of imminent fictional characters like Judge Azdak played superbly by Henry Jayasena in the Chalk Circle. Through everything he does or says, Azdak satirizes the court system. He asks Grusha, “You want justice, but do you want to pay for it? When you go to the butcher, you know you have to pay.”
Henry as Azdak
**** ****
On Maname: Excerpt from “Azdak’s Lore” by Nandi Jasentuliyana
On its 50th anniversary, Maname was staged in Los Angeles by Prof. Sarathchandra’s wife Lalitha, in 2006. In a program note for the occasion, I wrote: “All the critics hailed Maname as a new genre of theater in Sri Lanka that laid the foundation for a nationalistic identity creating a cultural uniqueness. The style of the play was Nadagam and it created eastern resonance. It was appreciable by everybody, the rural or educated folks of the city, and indeed anywhere in the world. Sarathchandra created a universal language of theater through the vehicle of Nadagam musicality. While the genre of Nadagam was prevalent in the country for centuries in the form of loose theater, which the rural folks employed for their mundane entertainment, Sarathchandra extracted the essence of the Nadagam Story after years of research and being with the rural folks for years travelling from village to village collecting data and making comparisons of styles and different modes of presentation. After such a period of toil he created a great drama in Maname out of the raw material which not only moved the audiences to tears, but forced them to be gripped in the situations that he created in the play. He harnessed in it humanity, instilled depth into its characters, and impressed as to what meaningful and serious theater is. By this means he demonstrated the possibility of creating a national cultural identity in spirit of theater in Sri Lanka. Its approach was novel and appreciable by everyone, its theme and quality of humaneness impregnated the minds of the audiences with emotive feelings penetrating into the roots of cultural milieu of our country. Thus, Sarathchandra ushered in a new era in the theater scene with the production of Maname, which after 50 years, still runs to capacity anywhere it is staged in the country.”
** “Azdak’s Lore” is a chapter in Jasentuliyana’s Memoire “Same Sky Different Nights“ covering his association with Theater Arts.
Nandasiri Jasentuliyana’s ‘odyssey’ in space law: “Same Sky, Different Nights”
