ජෝන් ද සිල්වා නුර්ති නාට්‍ය එකතුව-III-‍C.Don Bastian ; the predecessor of John de Silva

C. Don Bastian: the Predecessor of john de Silva

Although the history of Sinhala prose and verse writings goes as far back to the distant past, the history of sinhala drama commences from the 19th century. The most ancient era of drama was denoted by the Tamil term ‘Nadagam’. Then comes the era of Sinhala drama denoted by the term ‘Nurthi’. The most significant person who emerged from this period was john de Silva (1857 – 1922) This is the third volume of a series of his complete works. The prefaces to the first two volumes were confined to commentaries and references to his works. The present volume, which is the third one in the series is confined to his predecessor C. Don Bastian (1852 – 1921) and presents some of the commentaries and references to him and his works’

C. Don Bastian is supposed to be the creator of the ‘Nurthi’ period in the history of sinhala theatre. He was a rich member of a rich family in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. He was also a social reformer, a writer and a literary aesthete.He was also the editor of the first daily sinhala news paper. At that time going to see theatre had been the main recreation of those who lived in the urban sector. At the same time there was a certain decline in the ‘Nadagam’ tradition as a medium of popular viewing. The people preferred to see the musicals that came from Bombay and known as performed by parsee nationalities. These were written in Hindi, Urdu, Gujrati, Marathi, the languages used in India. Though the Sinhala people didn’t understand these languages, they preferred to listen to melodies embedded in these songs, and the stories or plots that revolved the works. They too preferred to see attractive costumes, stage decor, and various magical and mesmerizing gimmicks on the stage. They were enthralled by these effects. These parsee entertainment groups who came from time to time, to Sri Lankd, went on attracting the local audience in a continuous fashion, choosing their works in Colombo.

The intention of C. Don Bastian was to introduce a type of Sinhala plays to this particular local audience’ He took these works as his guiding model and in another direction. For this new model or genre he coined a term as ‘Nruthya’ of ‘Nurthi’ which come to be titled as ‘Rolina’, and was staged on 27 December 1877, in Colombo. The embecced story line was borrowed from a foreign source and the theatrical model was based on the Parsee type of theatre performances. The melodies of the songs too were borrowed from the Parsee operas.

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This new type of theatrical works in a new style titled as ‘Nurthi’ came to be quite popular. Bastian went on producing quite a number of such plays’ Some of them were known by the title ‘Romlin’,’Romeo and Juliet’,’Franklow and ingirlee’,’Proteus and Valentine’,’Leonine and Emline’,’Shula’,’Sinhaba’,’Swarnathilaka’ etc. According to documentary evidence, plays of Bastian had been seen by Burghers, Tamils, Musilims, English, and even the English governor of the time too had come to see them.

For the first fime in the history of Sinhala theatre, he is credited to have utilized a female character in his plays. She was one named Anna perera (Kannangara after marriage) who played the role of Romlin in the play of the same name. This was marked as the 26th semtember 1885 when the play Romlin in which the first role played by a female was performed. Since that moment even the female roles were played by males’

Bastian is attributed as the theatre man who took the stage plays to the urbanized upper class from its extant common audience. It was also to his credit that the song came to be a marketed commodity.

John de Silva was not only inspired by the creations of Bastian, but also seen as becoming a creator in a two – fold manner, as different from the former. Firstly, he fused his play contents to the spirit of the contemporary social issurs. A timely need which was ascertained as nationalism, and the need to illustrate the trends of the alien cultures such as mannerisms and customs, dress fashions, speech manners, folk manners. These aspects as being influenced from foreign cultural traits were detedted by de Silva. To address his need, he utilized his theatrical works. This was the factor, seen as different from Bastian’s creations. Secondly de Silva transcended the limits of Bastian as regards the use of music component. While Bastian used Parsee theatre melodies, John de Silva got down Indian musicians and utilised certain melodies so far absent from the local theatre scene. They were new melodies as against the already known melodies.

A discriminative scholar of the works of these two dramatists would perceive that de Silva possessed a significant lift off from Bastain as regards the poetic vision and the use of theatrical techniques.