Double winners for Gratiaen Award

By Ruhanie Perera

It was a double win again as two writers - Dr. Lakshmi de Silva and Ruwanthi de Chickera, shared the prestigious Gratiaen Award. The winners for the year 2000 were announced at a ceremony held at the Barefoot Gallery earlier this week.

For Dr. Lakshmi de Silva whose entry was a translation of Henry Jayasena's 'Kuveni', this was "a pleasant surprise". "Henry suggested I send it in for the award, but I never seriously thought of winning," says Dr. de Silva.

Inspired by the original 'Kuveni' first performed in 1963 with Henry Jayasena's wife Manel playing the lead, she had decided to take on the translation. "I had been toying with the idea for some years now. I was always impressed with the play both as a text and a performance because it was a very tight play in itself."

Having done the translations of Martin Wickremasinghe's 'Abhayagama', Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra's 'Maname' and 'Sinhabahu' and Dayananda Gunewardene's 'Gajaman Puwatha', Dr. de Silva says that the translation of Kuveni's story was not a difficult task. "In fact, the actual writing took only a couple of months. Probably because I was so passionate about the story itself and having seen it, that impact made it all the more easy."

Dr. de Silva, who lectured at the University of Ceylon in the sixties and later at the University of Kelaniya (1981 - 1999), got her doctorate, quite interestingly on 'Form, function and fidelity; a study of their relationship in relation to the translation of poetry, with special reference to Sinhala poetry', a subject that has always fascinated her. Speaking of her co-winner she says, "Winning with a dynamic young person like Ruwanthi de Chickera, I must say that it is very good company indeed."

Ruwanthi de Chickera's entry was her very first play 'Middle of Silence' which won the British Council New Playwriting Award for South Asia in 1996. It has been performed by theatre companies in Britain, Sri Lanka and India.

The actual writing of 'Middle of Silence' didn't take too long because she writes "fast and intensely", but being a firm believer in rewriting she keeps her scripts for a long time. "In fact I rewrote the play two years after my initial attempt. In essence it's the same, but the structure was reworked before it was performed."

'Middle of Silence', tells the story of a woman's relationship with a paraplegic and how in an effort to escape from that situation, she takes to prostitution. "It's a mix of real people, with a truckload of my imagination thrown in," says Ruwanthi who feels she'll never write like that again. "When I wrote that I had never seriously read any play before and it was written from the gut. Now, knowing what I know, I don't think I can go back to that again."

Just finishing her degree this year, she hopes to teach and seriously pursue drama. "I want to take it beyond the field of entertainment and explore it for the potent medium it is." At this point her main intention behind sending in her work for the award was the "pressure to publish".

The prize money of Rs. one lakh will be shared by the two winners and used for the publishing of their manuscripts. The other writers who were shortlisted for the award this year were Eva Ranasinghe, Shehan Karunatilleke and Jehan Aloysius.

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