Sanda Langa Maranaya: the Sinhala production of Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding

Sanda Langa Maranaya was produced in 2004. The premier was held at Bishop’s College Auditorium on 13 th and 14 th November. The play won eight awards, including the prestigious award, the Best Play of the year, at National Drama Festival 2005 organised by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and National Heritage.

Production details

Director: Kaushalya Fernando

Assistant Director: Chandana Aluthge

Script: Kaushalya Fernando and Nadee Jayathilake

Music: Nadeeka Guruge and Chandana Aluthge

Background Vocals: Nadeeka Guruge, Kaushalya Fernando, Nayomi Gunasiri, Lakmini Seneviratne, Niranjala Manjaree, Purnima Dilhani.

Music Recorded and mixed: Vishva Paranayapa, S Studio, Nugegoda

Sangeeth Wickramasinghe, Sangeeth Studio, Gampaha

Choreography: Chandana Aluthge

Stage Sets Design: Namal Jayasinghe

Costume Design: Kaushalya Fernando (Ideas: Kanchana Thalpawila)

Lighting: Chandana Aluthge, Kapila Kithsiri Aluthge

Make-up: Sumedha Hewawitharana

Wardrobe: Purna Dilhani, Geetha Rajini and Buddhima Padmasiri

Production Coordinator and

Stage Manger: Aruna Jayasena

Assistants: Shameen Athuraliya, Pramode Edirisinghe

Costumes Preparation: Majestic Tailors, Battaramulla, Mrs. Chitra Jayasena, Indranee Wickramaratne

Photography: Dilini Amarasinghe, Bhanu Prasanna

Publicity: Sandaru Advertising, Rajagiriya.

The Cast

Mother: Somalatha Subasinghe/Kaushalya Fernando

Bride: Chamila Peiris

Bridegroom: Prassanna Mahagamage/Mayura Kanchana

Leonardo: Wishvajith Gunasekera

Servant Woman: Lakmini Seneviratne

Leonardo’s Wife: Nadee Kammellaweera

Mother-in-law: Sharmaine Gunaratne

Bride’s Father: Lucien Bulathasinghala

Neighbour Woman: Champika Kannangara

Moon: Suresh Fernando

Death: Nayomi Gunasiri

Wood Cutters: Sanjaya Hettiarachchi, Mayura Kanchana,

Chamila Priyanka, Hiran Abeysekera

Young Girls: Dinuki de Silva, Ishara Wickramasena,

Buddhima Padmasiri

Young Men: Pramod Edirisinghe, Wilakshitha Mendis

Guests: Thilokanee Gunasekera, Geetha Alahakoon,

Palitha Abeyratne, Randima Kannangara

Main Dancers at Wedding: Suresh Fernando and Nayomi Gunasiri

Description of “Sanda Langa Maranaya”

The play contains Three Acts

Act One : Three scenes of the first act occur in different locations. Each scene sets in motion the conflicting undercurrent of the major characters in the play. Stylised-realism is the method of production used to build the dramatic tension.

Scene One

It is the home of the Mother and Bridegroom (son). Son is getting ready to go for work at his vineyard. Mother interrupts and through their conversation, it is revealed that her husband and the other son were killed in a dispute with another family called Felix. They discuss son’s upcoming engagement and marriage before son leaves for work. A Neighbour-Woman stops by and provides information regarding the Bride and her family. Neighbour-Woman confirms Mother’s suspicion concerning the Bride having had an earlier love. And it turns out that this love, Leonardo, is from the same family (Felix) who is responsible for the deaths of her husband and son.

Scene Two

It is Leonardo’s house. Leonardo’s Wife and Mother-in-Law are rocking a baby to sleep singing a frightful “lullaby” about a dying horse. At the end of the lullaby Leonardo enters home. Leonardo’s Wife asks him why his horse is always tired these days. She says that he has been seen riding on the far side of the plains where the Bride lives. Leonardo denies it. The conversation shifts to the upcoming marriage of the Bride and Bridegroom. Leonardo becomes uncomfortable with this subject matter. A Girl comes into the house and revealed information about Mother and Bridegroom buying lavish gifts for the Bride. Leonardo becomes frenzied hearing this and shouts at the Girl and then leave.

Scene Three

It is Bride’s home. The Mother, Bridegroom and Bride’s Father are formalising wedding arrangements. The Mother and Bride’s Father praise the worthiness of their children and wealth. The wedding is panned for Bride’s twenty-second birthday. The Bride’s true frame of mind which is impatient and frustration is expressed when she is alone with the Servant though the Bride seems reserved and quiet in company. The Servant asks her if she heard a horse at the house the night before, and the Bride objects vehemently, calling the Servant a liar. The scene ends when a horse is heard and both see that Leonardo is the rider.

Act Two : Act two contains two scenes and both scenes occur at Bride’s home. The opening scene of the second act divulges the irresistible passion between the Bride and Leonardo that takes the play to its catastrophic finale.

Scene one

It is Bride’s home on the day of wedding. Leonardo is the first guest to arrive on his horse and soon Leonardo and Bride are speaking passionately. Leonardo speaks out the misery and disastrous state of mind he is going through due to continued separation and their never having married. Bride replies that she is marrying finally to burry the past and the memory of him. Young girls appear singing and chanting wedding songs. The Bridegroom arrives with Mother. All leaves for the Church. Leonardo’s Wife insists Leonardo to go with her to the church.

Scene Two

It is Bride’s home. Servants prepare the house for the wedding function. Some of the guests, Mother and Bride’s Father have returned from the marriage ceremony. The Mother and Bride’s Father speak of Leonardo family and its reputation for violence. In the mean time the couple arrives home with guests and friends. The wedding celebration is set to begin. The Bride informs the Bridegroom that she is overwhelmed and wishes to rest for a while. Delighted friends and relatives gathered at home dance with joy. The Bridegroom too joins the dance with Leonardo’s Wife. A bit later the Bridegroom goes to find the Bride and she is nowhere to be found. Leonardo’s Wife announces that the Bride and Leonardo have eloped on his horse. The Bridegroom chases behind the lovers to take revenge for their transgression.

Act Three: Act three contains two scenes. The first scene of the third act sets in motion the tragic action about to take place through a super natural exploration of symbols such as the Moon, the Death, ect.

Scene One

It is in the forest at night. Three Woodcutters appear in the scene. They seem taking a short break from their work. They think that the fleeing couple will be found and killed and the Bridegroom too will die. While three Woodcutters are moving deep into the forest, the Moon and the Death appear in the scene. The blood-thirsty-Moon lights up the forest for Death, who camouflaged itself as an old beggar woman. The Bridegroom and his friend appear and see the beggar woman who leads the Bridegroom towards his prey.

The Bride and Leonardo enter utterly overpowered by their passion though they admit the enormity of their sin. The Bride request Leonardo to flee without her. He refuses to leave her. Death returns while Leonardo and the Bridegroom are in a knife fight. A shriek is heard.

Scene Two

Among the female characters appear in the scene a state of confusion and frustration. The Bride appears in the scene and explains why she eloped with Leonardo. She begs her husband’s mother to grant her death. Mother refuses. The Bride, TheMother, and Leonardo’ Wife utter verses of their loved ones. The Death appears and indicates what had happened in the forest. Bodies of the Bridegroom and Leonardo are brought in and the three women seem descent into inconsolable pain and suffering.

Sanda Langa Maranaya: the summary of the story

The bridegroom is a young man of rich estate owning family. His mother is a widow who is eternally weeping and whaling and resentful over the murder of her husband and the elder son by the family of Felix.

The bridegroom has worked hard which enabled him to buy a vineyard. He is planning to get married to a young woman from a neighbouring village. The mother finds out that this girl has had an intimacy with Leonardo Felix who belongs to the Felix family that murdered her husband and son. But now Leonardo is married to another woman and is a father of a baby. As the preparations for the wedding get on, the love between Leonardo and the girl begin to surface like fire arising from under the ashes. Finally this climaxes with the two of them unable to control their emotions get on to a horse and ride away during the wedding party of the young woman. Burning with anger at this, the bridegroom with the consent of his mother chases behind the couple and at the end Leonardo and the bridegroom die in a dual.

Finally a mother who has lost all her children and the husband, wife of Leonardo who is now widowed and bride whose groom is dead are left alone in this world.

Sanda Langa Maranaya (Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding)-Preview

By Dharshini Seneviratne

01.10.2004

Kaushalya Fernando, five-time winner of the prestigious Best Actress award at the State Drama Festival, Colombo, brilliantly brings out her directing talents in her debut direction of Frederico Garcia’s Lorca’s Blood Wedding, translated into Sinhala as Sanda Langa Maranaya. Her production is a sure indication that the talent she brought onto stage and screen she is convincingly able to cultivate and enhance in others as well.

Lorca’s Blood Wedding was his most successful, and deals with the tragedy brought about by the conflicts between societal decrees and individual desires. The plot is weaved around the love of Leonardo (the only “named” character in the play, and a woman, who, for unsaid reasons, never marry. Leonardo’s passion for her heightens at the moment she is to be betrothed to another man, and they elope on the eve of the wedding, bringing about the almost natural consequences of revenge, battles between the two male protagonists, and death.

While the universal themes of the play is widely appreciated, it is clear that Lorca had a more incisive criticism of close-minded Spanish society in mind when he wrote it, inspired by the true story of an Andalusian woman who abandoned her husband-to-be on their wedding day to run off with her childhood sweetheart.

For Kaushalya, the play resonates because of its passion, and its empathy with the lot of women. She says, “I was drawn to the play because of its intensity, the deep “within” that it attempts to dramatize, and its portrayal of women, their frustrations, suppressions, feelings, their outbursts, and silences”.

Kaushalya was also drawn to the play because of its highly dramatic nature, and the way in which Lorca has woven in dramatic conflict, song, chant, poetry, music, rhythm, and antinaturalistic, stylized techniques such as that of the Moon and the Death on the stage. The play is also for Kaushalya about youth as victims of fanaticism and intolerance, which has lessons even for contemporary society.

Sanda Langa Maranaya is sensitively and intelligently directed and brings out, even in translation, the passion that Lorca would have envisioned for it. Superb performances, such as in the lead role of the bride, played by Chamila Peiris, brings out the fatalism and sensuality of the drama, and the lively music and dance routines adds a Spanish vitality to a play that is nevertheless localized for Sri Lankan audiences: for example, the song at the eve of the wedding (Pipenna Pipenna Manaaliye) was translated to reflect Sri Lankan traditional songs to greet the brideand the bridegroom.

Other lead roles are played by Wishvajith Gunasekara, Prasanna Mahagamage, Somalatha Subasinghe, Lucien Bulathsinhala, Nadee Kammellaweera, Suresh Fernando, Nayomi Gunasiri, Lakmini Seneviratne, Sharmaine Guneratne, Mayura Kanchana, Sanjaya Hettiarachchi, Champika Kannangara, Ishara Wickramasena, Thilokanee Gunesekara, and a number of new comers to the national theatre groomed at Somalatha’s PlayHouse in Kotte.

It is clear from her debut production that Kaushalya has strong intentions of re-invigorating a Sinhala theatrical tradition which she feels is gradually losing out on dramatic elements, giving way to increasingly more cinematic renditions. She describes her dramatization of Lorca’s play as semi-musical-surrealism that weaves in nature, earth, passion, and the fantastic. Her childhood viewings of Gunasena Galappathi’s “Mudu Puttu”, an adaptation of Lorca’s “Yerma” where her mother, the playwright Somalatha Subasighe played the lead, and impressions of drama left in her by plays such as Dhawala Bheeshana (Sartre’s Men Without Shadows) had shaped in her an attraction towards highly dramatic, passionate productions from early on.

Kaushalya incorporates choreographed movements, music and rhythm, and vivid lighting and colours to complement the intensity and sensuality of the performances. She believes that theatre should appeal to spectatorship, which in turn ensures mass participation in the process of performance and reception. “Without mass participation, a strong theatre culture will be only a distant dream”, says Kaushalya.

Kaushalya brings with her to this direction debut the experience and wisdom of more than 15 years of performance on stage, screen and television. The play was translated by Kaushalya Fernando and Nadee Kammallaweera. The Music composed by Nadeeka Guruge infuses Latin energy into the play with guitar and song scores. Chandana Aluthge’s Choreography blends in with the mood of the drama to provide movement and gestures that embrace the passion of the play. Stage sets are by Namal Jayasinghe, and make up is by Sumedha Hewawitharana.

Sanda Langa Maranaya will be on stage on November 13 th at 7 p.m. and November 14 th at 3.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. at the Bishop’s College Auditorium, Colombo. Tickets will be available at the theatre from 1 st November. Ticket rates: Rs 150/=, Rs 100/=, Rs 75/=, Rs 50/=.

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