Films and plays by nature portray good and bad as polar opposites, and for this reason the actors personifying them sometimes give the impression that the world is housed by paragons of virtue on the one hand and absolute villains on the other. Reality isn’t cast in black-and-white, true, but the temptation to give into the notion that it is ails our artists and actors. It is for this reason that stars who‘ve refused to lend credence to the good/bad dichotomy are to be lauded.
Going by this therefore, Anoja Weerasinghe, actress and social activist, is a living testament to what acting should entail.
Anoja was born in the village of Kailagoda, in Badulla. Although she never
received any formal training in her field as a child, she admits straight off
that the experiences she went through in her childhood taught her enough and
more. Her family had been artistically inclined, moreover, while the bonds they had with village and temple shaped their innate sensibilities.
All this must have helped a lot when Anoja began taking part in stage plays, no
doubt.
Her childhood had oscillated between Badulla and Moneragala,
with her attending schools in both regions and performing items in them. Remembering
those days Anoja relates to me one such item, where she had to act as a
Japanese princess and one she performed when she was about five or six. “That
was my first experience onstage,” she smiles.
She took part in her first play nearly 10 years later, when
she was 13. The play, “Anduren Eliyata”, had won the praise of the Chief Guest
(a prominent local politician), but it was what he had to say about Anoja
herself that moved her. “He basically said that he could see a great actress in
me, and that he could see me acting in mainstream films. Now imagine a
13-year-old village girl hearing those words from a politician, and one who regularly
visited and resided in Colombo. Naturally, this was BIG news to me!” she laughs.
What she gained during all these years, she puts to me quite
clearly, was compounded by her interest in the cinema. Back then, when going to
the cinema hall was considered a ritual, Anoja would watch films and walk back
about four miles (“because there weren’t any buses after 6.30 in the evening”).
She is correct in implying that it was a ritual, of course, and I wonder: do
actors receive their baptism of fire at the theatre, and not (as is supposed)
in school? The way Anoja describes how she trudged with her friends to the
nearest hall for the latest shows in town affirms that, I suppose, even though
she herself doesn’t admit it explicitly.
I’m sure people have that one film they watch and are awed
for the rest of their lives by, and I’m also sure Anoja is no exception. With
no hesitation, she comes out with it: “I remember watching Welikathara quite
vividly even today. That was the first Sinhala film shot in Cinemascope, as you
know, and at the time we had very few halls, scattered for the most in and
around Colombo, which could screen it properly. Not surprisingly, when I saw
it, the frame was distorted and the images were projected on the wall.”
She admits that during these years, she remained fixated on the cinema. “I watched as many Sinhala films as I could, for the most because of the actors but also because of their storylines. This was when Malini Fonseka had become a star. After watching her in some films, I became a fan.” She adds that whenever she got to see Malini’s performances, she would imitate her for days on end.
But of course, she was by now a stage actress, not a film
star, and because of this she found it difficult to get rid of an overriding
penchant to overemphasise. “I
still hadn’t grasped the essence of film-acting, which was CLEAN DIFFERENT to
the cinema in terms of acting. Not surprisingly, I used to highlight every
nuance and shade of emotion I’d have to play out, even when I was initiated
into the cinema.”
That initiation came
about in 1979, when she acted opposite Malini Fonseka in Monarathenna (“My
first real performance was actually in Tak Tik Tuk some time back, which
lasted for about 30 seconds”), which had marked the first (“and last,” she
emphasises with a smile) time she made the mistake of blurring the distinction
between cinema and theatre.
“Basically, I
overacted. My co-stars could have got angry at me for this, when it was clear
that I committing the mistake again and again, but they didn’t. Malini akka and
Daisy akka (Rukmani Devi) instead comforted and corrected me. They tutored me
on the mechanics of acting in front of a camera. I found that very helpful, and
to this date I am grateful. They never made me feel like an
outsider or a newcomer.”
Anoja has had her
fair share of both commercial and non-commercial films, but it’d be wrong of me
not to say that we remember and admire her greatly for those performances where
she acted free of frill and seriously. She rattles off a list here, but because
of spatial constraints I can’t include them all here. Suffice it to say that
they all show her at her best, depicting the sort of female protagonist the
Sinhala cinema epitomised in the 1980s.
As I pointed out
at the beginning, the good/bad distinction depicted in the characters of our
films has been overused beyond repair. With Anoja’s characters, however, we enter
a different terrain, which reduces that opposition to nothing more than a convenient
fiction. I admit I’m not a film critic, but when I see her in Siri Medura (for instance) this is what I discern quite clearly.
It is a testament
to how strong she has stuck by this vision that she’s instilled into most of her
characters that ambiguity which shields them from the good/bad distinction.
They all are flawed, they all have their darker shades, but this never for once
dims our sympathy for them, particularly when they’re hard done by a (largely) patriarchal
world.
When talking
about her in this regard, however, there’s no way I can evade talking about D.
B. Nihalsinghe. “How on earth could I have known that about a decade after
watching Welikathara, I’d end up acting under him?” she smiles. “He was the cameraman
for Professor Sunil Ariyaratne’s film Muhudu Lihini, in which I acted, and he
saw my performance.”
Apparently when
her name was suggested as the female lead in Nihalsinghe’s adaptation of
Arawwala Nandimithra’s Maldeniye Simion, both author and producer had been
sceptical. “They were worried about how well I could fit in a serious setting
when all they’d seen of me, by that time, was a crooning lover running from one
bush to another in commercial films. But Nihalsinghe was adamant. He wanted me
for that role, and if he couldn’t have me, he wouldn’t make the film.”
They relented in
the end, thankfully, and she took part in what would be later regarded as one
of her finest performances. I haven’t seen Maldeniye Simion, nor have I seen Keli
Madala (also directed by Nihalsinghe and also featuring Anoja), unfortunately,
so I can’t comment beyond this. But Anoja’s fond reminiscences about the
director merit mention, and I quote in full:
“I was like a ball of clay under D. B. Nihalsinghe’s direction, to be honest. He moulded me excellently. To this day I still can’t understand how I played for him in those two films. He’s so soft-spoken that when he instructs me on how to act in a particular sequence, the actor beside me can’t hear him. In a very subtle manner, he drew the characters I played for him into my soul. And in the end, I acted with the likes of Joe Abeywickrama, Swarna Mallawarachchi, and Ravindra Randeniya thanks to him. He was my guru.”
Maldeniye Simion won for Anoja an award at the New Delhi International Film Festival, the first
for a Sri Lankan. “People think that the competition was centred on South Asia,
but this isn’t true. There were actors and actresses not only from Asia, but
from the rest of the world as well.” In any case, her winning the award led to
the next chapter in her career, when Lever Brothers, together with some friends
of hers, financed a studentship at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
(LAMDA).
I personally suspect
that her experiences at LAMDA are enough to fill several chapters. Anoja
herself offers a summary of them all: “What I learnt at LAMDA was that acting
was an art, but more importantly a multifaceted art. I never knew, for
instance, that there was a need to train one’s voice, but we had to take
voice-training exercises there. We even went for fencing classes! Of course,
all that helped, and in fact if you compare my performances before I went to
LAMDA with those I gave afterwards, you’ll notice subtle differences.”
I put to her here
that despite these subtle differences, there’s that basic, unyielding, and raw
diction in her acting that not even LAMDA could refine, and for this reason we
still treasure her performances. She answers this by telling me that
although we still draw a boundary between actors who’re formally trained and
those who’re not, that boundary is actually a fiction.
“Look at Gamini
Fonseka and Joe Abeywickrama. They didn’t ‘study ‘acting as such. But they
learnt their trade, whether at school or in their village. To me, hence, this
distinction people talk about is meaningless, because even though we were never
actors professionally at the outset, we knew our trade by instinct.” When I
tell her that this may well be seen in actors today, she disagrees. “Back then
we knew how to respect our elders, and how to look at and up-to them and learn
a thing or two. I don’t see that with actors in today’s generation."
To wrap things
up, I end this little piece by her reminiscences aboard another film she looks
back at fondly: Parakrama Niriella’s Siri Medura, which she acted in before
her stint at LAMDA.
“When I was
acting there, I didn’t know what film-acting entailed, a problem that bothered
me particularly in the final sequence, when I had to give in to hysterics after shooting and killing the main character with a gun. This involved a lot of
footage, which necessitated a series of rehearsals and a perfect final take. When
Parakrama aiya asked me to do a rehearsal, however, I was lost. How could I act
out when there was nothing in my mind? I told Parakrama aiya to go for the
take, hoping that something would ‘come out’. What happened next? The camera started rolling, and I began asserting my natural self. This
led in turn to a barrage of hysterics which continued until the very last shot.
That first take was taken in. Just like that.”
It is to Anoja’s
credit that very few actors, even veteran ones, can act and come
out unscathed this way. Of course, she offers a qualifier here: “If I were asked to
do this sequence today, I don’t think I can comply!” The confession of a truly
instinct-driven actor, I believe, and one because of whom our cultural
firmament has become richer and richer by the decade.
Written for: Daily News TOWN AND COUNTRY, January 20 2016
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