This is one of the letters written to me by the late art and literary critic K. S. Sivakumaran. In it, he briefly mentions Tamil, Sinhala, and English plays staged in Colombo, the people who were involved in theatre, and his own contributions. In that sense, it carries great importance. September 15 is the remembrance day of K. S. Sivakumaran. In connection with that, I am sharing this letter.
Wed, May 13, 2020 at 12:17 p.m.
My recollections on Thamil Drama in Colombo!
In the 1960s and 1970s, I was a keen drama critic. Having seen the Colombo North cine-dramas and Rajaratnam's Colombo South comedies. I wrote a column called “Manathirai” in Thamil in the Thinakaran Vaara Manjari. I criticized all the slapstick presentations that went by the name Thamil Drama. This was because I read many books in English about Drama and Theatre and understood that what we witnessed were recreating Indian Thamil film sequences and using colloquial Yaalpaaana speech comedies. In 1953 or 1954, the TKS Brothers visited Colombo and staged a professional drama presentation. There was a semblance of theatricality in their presentation. I also witnessed one or two plays of the doyen of Lankan Thamil Drama-Sornalingam.
It must be 1961 or 1962, I saw a play called Mathamarram written by the late A N Kanthasamy, a writer and a Marxist thinker. When I saw that I was baffled. It was a different cup of tea for me. It was like a Shavian play. It was provoking and feast for thinking. I wrote a review of it in Tribune, now defunct.
