Reviving Tower Hall

THEATRE: The late President Ranasinghe Premadasa was a great lover of the Tower Hall. He had seen practically all the plays staged at this National Theatre during its heyday. After the war and the advent of the Sinhala Cinema in the late forties bad times fell not only on the Tower Hall, but also on all Sinhala stage plays.

Some of the stalwart stage personalities such as B. A. W. Jayamanne and Sirisena Wimalaweera branched off to film making and the Tower Hall was inactive.

By the 1970s the Tower Hall Theatre had been turned into a cheap cinema hall where low grade cow boy action films were shown. If I am not mistaken it had either been leased or bought outright by the Cinema giant ‘Cinemas Ltd.’

Just a few of the Tower Hall actors found a place in the new medium - cinema. Most of the others became jobless. Some of them, it is said, had become taxi drivers in Maradana. Mr. Premadasa was determined to revive the Tower Hall to its pristine glory.

He somehow managed to get back the Tower Hall premises to the Local Govt. Ministry, to be run by the Colombo Municipal Comissioner.

Rebuilding of the Tower Hall began in 1978 under a powerful committee as follows:- Tower Hall Co-Ordinating Committee - K. H. J. Wijeyadasa, Additional Secretary,Ministry of Local Govt, Housing and Construction - Chairman, Ajantha Wijesena, Chairman, Building Materials Corporation, B. A. Jayasinghe, Special Comissioner, Colombo Municipality, S. T. Gunawardena, Competent Authority, Colombo Commercial Co., A. J. Ranasinghe, Coordinating Officer, Ministry of Local Govt. and Construction -, W. D. Ailapperuma, Deputy Director, Ministry of Local Govt., Housing and Construction - Secretary, Chitrasena and Henry Jayasena.

The Engineering Division of the Building Materials Corporation was in charge of reconstruction work. Mahinda Dias was Consultant, Colombo Commercial Co. was in charge of air conditioning and A. J. Ranasinghe was in charge of fund raising.

I have a souvenir which has some very interesting information. The original Tower Hall Theatre was opened on Saturday, 16 December 1911 by the then Colombo Mayor K. W. B. Mcleod ‘ for the benefit of the general public’.

The premier performance that night was “Pandukabhaya’ written by Charles Dias. It consisted a cast of 152 actors [no actresses, the female parts also being played by males] three Acts, eight Scenes, 54 songs, six verses, three slokas and 301 lines of dialogue.

Governor Henry McCallum had arrived for the occasion under police escort and to music played by the Royal Orchestra sharp at 8.30 p.m. Other distinguished persons present, apart from Mayor Mcleod were Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, Donald Obeysekera, John Harvard, E. Evans, D. B. Jayatilleke and F. R. Senanayake.

Fund raising

Premadasa was Prime Minister at that time. He did not ask the Govt. to give him the money to rebuild the Tower Hall. Instead he asked all the businessmen in and around Maradana and also other donors to help out with the funds. Some of these people were those who remembered the past glory of the Tower Hall.

In fact they had been part and parcel of that glory. They gladly joined in the effort. Premadasa was a clever man. He appointed his trusted lieutenant A. J. Ranasinghe to do the actual collection of funds and A.J. did a fine job of it.

Prime Minister Premadasa was a man of quick action and he made sure that he got quick results. The New Tower Hall was built in practically no time. He wanted to open the New Tower Hall with a brand new production of John de Silva’s ‘SIRI SANGABO’ - one of Mr. Premadasa’s favourite plays.

He planned this while the work of rebuilding was going on. Through A. J. Ranasinghe, he was looking for a person to direct the new production. Mr Ranasinghe had approached several persons including Chitrasena and Dayananda Gunawardhana (This I came to know much later). Finally he came to me.

One morning A. J. Ranasinghe came to my office and broached the subject.This is a fine opportunity for you. Don’t refuse it” I remember him saying. I mulled the matter over my mind. Ranasinghe Premadasa was the Prime Minister of the country. I was a Govt. servant - a clerk in the Public Works Dept.

How could I refuse a request by the Prime Minister of the country? He could even ‘order’ me to do the job! I told A.J. that that was the position as far as I was concerned and added that in any case I would like to try my hand at directing a ‘Nurti’ kind of play. I had never handled a ‘Nurti’ play A.J. was delighted. But I forwarded some conditions.

Rehearsals

I told A.J. Ranasighe that I wanted ‘official leave’ for rehearsing on week days. Not only me, but any member of the cast that I select for the play, if he or she happens to be a Govt., Bank or Private Sector employee, will have to be obtained on ‘official’ leave. “You will have to look after that part of it.” I told A.J. He readily agreed.

“I can arrange all that through the P.M.’s office” He assured me. I also told him that I needed transport to and from rehearsals and until the Tower Hall stage is ready I wanted the John de Silva stage booked all morning - 5 days of the week.

I left out the weekends so that I as well as the cast could have a break. Also to leave the hall available for staging of other plays. “What would be your fee? Asked A.J. finally. “Nothing.” I said. “I am doing it for the pleasure of it!”

A.J. agreed to all my requests and left a happy man. We arranged a date and time for the inaugural meeting. With such facilities provided rehearsing Siri Sangabo was a pleasurable task indeed.

To begin with I studied the script of Siri Sangabo very carefully. I managed to find a very fine cast too. Some of them like Chitrasena, Victor Wickramage, Quintus Weerakoon, Sunil Hettiaratchchy, Srilal Abeykoon and Chandrani Gunawardene had had some experience with Tower Hall plays. Almost all the others were ‘newcomers’, so to say.

When I sent the word around that I was doing Siri Sangabo for the re-awakening of the Tower Hall, the response was extremely good. We rehearsed at the John de Silva stage. A.J. Ranasinghe and Chitrasena were always present at the rehearsals.

A very nice thing happened one morning. I was having problems with finding the correct person to play the role of ‘Raktakshi’ - the demon. I was trying out Qunitus Weerakoon who is a bulky fellow. From the audience Chitrasena said something about how to handle the role. Jokingly I told him “Chitra you look like a devil in any case.

Why don’t you come and try the role out yourself!” To my surprise, Chitrasena got up from his seat immediately and came on stage. That is how the great Chitrasena happened to play the role of ‘Raktakshi’ during the inaugural session of Siri Sangabo. I was of course very proud to have him in my cast.

Double cast

Even Jayalath Manoratne and Nissanka Diddeniya joined the cast. I was even able to double cast some of the characters.

Thus we had Victor Wickramage and Wijaya Nandasiri as Sangabo, Wijeratne Warakagoda and Quintus Weerakoon as Rajaguru, Sunil Hettiartachchy and Jayalath Manoratne as Bammanna, Chitrasena and Quintus Weerakoon as Raktakshi, Chandrani Gunawardene and Ratmali Gunasekera as Sangabo Queen and Jeevani Jayasinghe and Ritani Ratnapala as Bammanna’s wife.

We had entrusted the music to our veteran musician Shelton Premaratne. There was one problem. Even Shelton did not know all the melodies of all the songs - and there were many songs in the script.

Fortunately we had the revered Romulus de Silva who had played many leading roles in the Tower Hall plays - including the character of Sangabo himself.

I went to meet him personally at his Nawala residence and asked him to do the honour of giving us the tunes of the songs of Siri Sangabo, originally composed by the famed Indian musician Vishvanath Lavjee. He gladly agreed. He was in his seventies at that time, but very agile and very active.

I arranged with A.J. Ranasinghe that I would use the same transport given to me to go to Nawala each day and fetch him from home. On my way back home to Nugegoda, I dropped him at home, before I proceeded.

Things were working out very well. It was truly amazing how Romulus Master remembered the whole play by heart and knew all the melodies of all the songs. Without his help we would never have been able to tackle the musical side of the production.

A.J. Ranasinghe was present at every rehearsal and helped us whenever help was needed. Almost all the songs of Siri Sangabo were so beautiful and haunting that often after the rehearsals were over we got Victor Wickramage, Wijaya Nandasiri, Chandrani Gunawardene and Ratmali Gunasekera to sing those songs again and again for our pleasure.

At the end of it even A.J. knew all the songs by heart. Finally the New Tower Hall stage was ready and we moved over there. By this time I had appointed Dharmadasa Kuruppu as Stage Manager and Nimal Jayasinghe as my Asst. Stage Manager. Occasionally Prime Minister Premadasa too dropped in to see how we were progressing.

Thought of the week

My heartiest congratulations to Jayani Sarala Kariyawasam for winning the Best Child Artist Award of the World given by Hollywood’s Young Artists Foundation. The girl, 12 years of age now was only ten when she was chosen by Deepa Mehta to play the pivotal role of ‘Chuyiya’ in her film ‘WATER’.

It is said Deepa Mehta was delighted with her find from Galle and that Sarala had taken the role in her stride - innocent, full of mischief and fun and deeply moving. It is a very rare achievement for one of our young actresses - especially because this was her very first film.

We have had other child prodigies too. Nithywani Kandasamy and Pramudi Karunaratne won our hearts with their heart warming performances, again, as first timers, in Somaratne Dissanayake’s unforgettable creation “SAROJA’ a few years back.

That duo too won international fame by winning the Golden Butterfly Awards as Best Actresses at the Isfahan International Film Festival in Iran. Nithyawani Kandasamy won the same award for a second time in the same Festival for her performance in ‘Punchi Surangnavi’ - a film by Somaratne Dissanayake.

Then we had Dasun Madhusankha and Sajith Anuttara in equally powerful roles in Somaratne Dissanayake’s poem of a film ‘Suriya Arana’. I am not sure whether they won any awards, internationally or otherwise for their heart binding performances.

Anyway, Sarala Kariyawasam’s achievement is unique in that she won it for a film directed by a world figure like Deepa Mehta and even had to learn a new language for the role. May we have more Saralas in the future too, for the glory of our country!

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