Sita Helen Evelyn Parakrama
| Sita Helen Evelyn Parakrama | |
|---|---|
 Sita getting ready for stage performance.jpg Sita getting ready for stage performance | |
| Born | Sita Helen Evelyn Jayawardana 30 October 1925 Kurunagalle, Ceylon |
| 💀Died | 27 April 1978 (aged 52) Colombo, Sri Lanka27 April 1978 (aged 52) |
| 🏳️ Nationality | Sri Lankan |
| Other names |
|
| 💼 Occupation |
|
Sita Helen Evelyn Parakrama (née Jayawardana) (30 October 1925 – 27 April 1978) was a Sri Lankan actress, and one of the leading personalities in the arts in post-independence Sri Lanka.
Jayawardana entered the Sinhala language film world with a small role in Kadawunu Poronduwa (The Broken Promise; 1947) the first Sinhala language movie. Her next role was as the heroine of Eda Rae (That Night; 1953), directed by Shanthi Kumar Seneviratne and produced by Ceylon Theatres (owned by Sir Chittampalam A. Gardner). It was a 35 mm black and white film and was the first completely local venture, with cast, sound, and all technical studio work done in Ceylon.
She played the lead in the ballet The Spirit of the Mahaweli presented by The Sinhala institute of Culture at the Ladies' College Hall. The play was written by Loranee Seneratne and directed by Dick Dias. It was a "mammoth" production, with a 150-person cast and replete with some of the most beautiful women of that era including four former beauty queens. Other dance theatre productions included Ashokamala and Ediriweera Sarachchandra 's Pabavathi. Other films include lead roles in the 1957 black and white film Jeevitha Satana and Sansare (1962) (also directed by Shanthi Kumar Seneviratne).[1]
Jayawardana wrote a regular column for the Sunday Times of Ceylon called 'Bringing Up Mama" and edited the women's page of The Times of Ceylon. She was the founder and Chief Editor of Ceylon's first women's magazine Ceylon Woman, that commenced in 1952, and which she ran for several decades. The magazine ran with the tagline "The Premier Women's Magazine in Ceylon" and had a London office at 231/2 Strand. She also had two regular columns, "Talk of the Town" and "Bringing up Mama", in later years. She produced and anchored several radio programmes, including "Arts Magazine" for Radio Ceylon.
Cultural context
Jayawardana's milieu was eclectic, and included the "Lionel Wendt Art Centre" crowd and the 43 Group. Colombo in the 1950s to 1970s era had a confluence of international cultural theatre and arts events, from the performances of Martha Graham and Pavlova in ballet, to Duke Ellington in jazz, and an amazing array of foreign orchestras and classical music concerts. Out of this, a local equivalent of the Bloomsbury group was formed, who were bourgeoisie, intellectual elite ranging from Cambridge scholars to Marxist–Leninist theorists, architects, painters, academics, classicists, musicians and orientalists. They were all well-heeled and steeped in western culture, and now experimenting in cross over local works and influences. Into this, a vast body of locally produced works sprang forth, ranging from the Greeks, Shakespeare, Pinter, Lorca, Brecht, Strindberg, Chekov, Molière, Shaw, Eugene O'Neil etc.
The Lionel Wendt Art Centre was gifted by Harold Pieris, a Sri Lankan patron of the arts and philanthropist. It was his former home 'Albarado' (Spanish for the dawning of a new day) and purportedly inspired by Chilean Poet Neruda. The theatre opened with Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths produced by the Hungarian-Jewish director Neumann Jubal in 1955. The play ran for ten days (the longest in that era for English language theatre) and had a stellar cast of some of the big names in local English theatre Irangani and Winston Serasinghe, Vernon Abeysekere, Percy Colin Thome, Miriam de Sarem, Lucien de Soyza, Sheila and Arthur van Langenberg, Norman Impett, Sita and Sali Parakrama, Neville Kanakeratne, Jeanne Pinto and three expats David Miles, Giuseppe Formenti, and Miles Chapman. The play was set in Russia "in a doss house for the damned and desolate" with her playing the sister of the landlady played by Jeanne Pinto.
Family life and upbringing
Jayawardana was the daughter of Brig C.P Jayawardana (1898–1986), and Sylvia Dorothy Samarasinghe "Birdie" Jayawardana.
She was an alumni of Ladies' College – an elite Anglican missionary girls school in the heart of Colombo.
Brigadier C.P Jayawardana was a Keble College Oxford man. He was Senior Assistant Conservator of Forests, Scout Chief and a highly decorated Military officer. Former Ceylonese Equerry to the Queen, extra ADC to Governor General Herwald Ramsbotham, 1st Viscount Soulbury and was Commander of Trincomalee (Strategic port Eastern Ceylon) during world war II reporting directly to the Supreme Commander of the British Forces, Louis Mountbatten. Thus from Balmoral to Bach and Bartok and Bharata natyam, Sita's cultural canvas was immense.
She was also the niece of Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke (1892–1978), the first Ceylonese Governor General of Ceylon (1954–1962). She lived in the Governor's house when her mother took over the Governor's house and children's upbringing on the death of her sister-in-law, Esther Jayawardane.
She was married to Sali Parakrama, former Deputy Commissioner of Inland revenue, an intellectual and a National Chess champion, who in turn, ran a regular Jazz programme on national radio (Radio Ceylon) and was an active member of the Lionel Wendt film and photography societies.
Theatre and Film
Jayawardana and her husband were key members of the CADC (Colombo Amateur Theatre Group) and ITG (International Theatre Group founded in 1955). Her poignant role as 'Big Mama' in Tennessee William's A Street Car Named Desire, directed by Lal Seneviratne, was possibly one of her best, though in many ways it was in the early twilight of her slide to loneliness and decay. Other notable plays were Diary of Anne Frank and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
While records of the early Drama circle and radio theatre days are sketchy, the commemorative limited edition book 'Art', for[clarify] Arthur van Langenberg, records some of their personal reminiscing of the "golden days of the University Drama Soc".
The first drama circle radio production Infernal Machine, produced by Arthur (who Ian Gunatilleke delightfully calls "a delectable synthesis of Portuguese courtier, Terpsichorean gypsy and Thimbirigasyaya gamin") with Lorraine Abeysekere née Forbes and Osmand Jayaratne playing leads. Osmand later played Trinco who falls in love with Currita, the romantic heroine played by Jayawardana in A 100 years Old by the Quintero brothers in 1960.[1]
Other early plays include the production at the King George Hall (Colombo University) of 'Lady Precious Stream' the 1940s production of Lyn Ludowyk's 'The Merry Wives' and the 1941 production of Peace and Quiet. In Sali's words, "by now the war was in full swing and the roar of Bristol Blenheim's taking off from the Race Course used to Interrupt rehearsals." Another early play was Antigone by Annuoih with Iranganie Serasinghe(Meedeinya) and Johan Leembrogan in lead roles; she played "a foil to Antigone and irradiated quicksilver charm in all too brief an appearance."[citation needed]
Radio Theatre work of importance includes her performance of Desdemona with Winston Serasinghe as Othello.
Several other plays in which she had some involvement, of which the details are unclear, are Koestler's Twilight Bar, Jean Anouih's Antigone done in modern dress at the King George Hall, Androcales and the Lion (adapted to radio by Vernon Abeysekere), Noël Coward's Weather Wise and Tyronne Guthrie's The Flowers are Not for You to Pick.
In 1972, she produced J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls at the Lionel Wendt Theatre. "It revolves around the perennial theme of no man is an island unto itself. I picked The Inspector because it had something about it, which I have always believed in – that we are all responsible for each other, that we are all involved in each other in some way." Sita said.
Dance
Jayawardana was also an oriental dancer having mastered and performed shows in Kandyan dance, Bharata Natya, Manipuri, and Kathakali. She danced with the leading artists of that time, including Chithrasena and Vajira in Kandyan dance, Shanthi Kumar in Kathak and Bharata Natya and with Sujatha Jayawardana.
She also danced with her Indian dance teacher, Guru Kunchunni, in Kathakali dance form. Kunchunni taught in Sri Lanka for 7 years and is best known for having taught the Indian dancer Ram Gopal. Decades on, critics and friends recall the "joie de vivre" she brought to her Manipuri dancing as she danced with her lifelong friends Sujatha Jayawardena and Sita Rajasingham. Ramsbotham as chief guests.
Pioneer feminist and fashionista
Jayawardana was a pioneer in women's rights with an almost unconscious and cavalier disregard for gender norms, having caused a scandal by first getting into Medical college in an era when few women got in and then opting out midstream to take off to Fleet street and study Journalism. She did a short stint writing for the Evening Standard in London. Whilst most of her writing is not traceable, a delightful piece on her first encounter and impressions of the famous poet and founding editor of Poetry London, Sri Lankan born Tambimuttu and some pictures of her dalliance with him in London remain in a scrap book (the inaugural edition of Poetry London had Dylan Thomas, Laurence Durrell, Stephen Spender, Herbert Read and others).
Jayawardana used her magazine, Ceylon Woman, as a forum to also launch causes that concerned women and society. Her magazine sponsored the first women's fashion shows and was a platform for many designers. She too had a great sense of style and panache. A famous picture of her in a life magazine supplement of Independence day celebration shows her totally at ease amongst the Colonials and royalty, playing a game of "bottle tower"[clarification needed] with a diplomat, Malcolm Macdonald, presumably breaking all protocol. A leading figure in social and charitable services, she helped the Jayasekere home for women and children, and was an active figure in Deshapremi Kala Peramuna.
Jayawardana's modelling and fashion sense was far ahead of her time. In 1963, a fashion show organized by Kathleen Labrooy hailed the "show of the year", she created ripples modelling her saree with a difference. The "Pearl" in which the "pallaw" was caught in a clip on the left shoulder and draped around the back in a fichu jacket. A separate length of net formed the mock "pallaw". On her wrist she wore a large black flower which served the purpose of a bag, the net impact was not so much radical (which it was), but rather it gave a truly contemporary twist to an age old traditional form of dress and made it look "haute couture".
Cause celebre
Jayawardana was often involved in using her beauty for a purpose in fundraising. Another such event, held at "The Cococabana Club" in Colombo, was a mannequin parade directed by ballet teacher and choreographer Marjorie Sample. Her black and off shoulder white saree-dress ensemble with black saree piece cum satin shawl, was a stunner that would have sat at the top league of any Paris catwalk.
She also played a role in the iconic goodwill visit of India's "top notch" film stars who played an Indo-Lanka cricket match of the stars. The local team was led by legendary actress Rukmini Devi and the Indian team by Raj Kapoor. This was historic on many counts, particularly as it marked the conclusion of an Indo-Ceylon agreement (Nehru-Kottalawella pact, made in January 1954) that addressed the status of persons of Indian origin resident in Ceylon. The goodwill visit collected Rs. 40,000 for charities (possibly worth 40 million today[when?] in purchasing power parity). Another curated fashion show on record is "1001 Nights in Aid of the Deaf and Blind School". Her fundraisers were legion and the Scout movement (of which her father was Scout Chief) was another beneficiary.
Of the big names in the arts she helped was Kirthi Sri Karunaratne[2] who went on to work for Dior. Kirthi paid tribute to how brave and contrarian the suggestion first seemed when she persuaded Kirthi to follow his talent and passion and become a designer. While today it is quite ordinary, her persuasion that a man go into fashion design was bold for that era. She also helped the famous book illustrator of children's stories Sybil Wettasinghe have a broader canvas to showcase her talent in her early years before she gained her status as the pre-eminent book illustrator of the land.
She was also known for having helped a generation of artists and designers to find their own voice. She produced a slim book of poetry in 1977, born out of the loss she felt for her husband's death.
The multi-dimensional artist
Jayawardana was formally trained in art under Margrita de Kretser and while she had few one woman exhibitions. She has exhibited her work in Italy, Russia and London. Her first Solo exhibition was held at the Photographic society hall in Kollupitiya in 1951. A leading art critic of that time, Jag Mohan described her art as "the vitality of the unorthodox rebel". He classifies her works as falling into two main types – "Neo Impressionism" and "Expressionism", with stylistic echoes that remind him of Munch, Klee and James Ensor, the Belgium expressionist. In an appreciation of her first formal show, he wrote, "Sita is an exception to the rule 'a Jack of all trades is master of none'. She is a 'Jill of all trades' if you like, who can master every one of them. The Muses and Goddess Saraswati have been liberal to her. ... With this exhibition, her first one-woman show, it looks as though she has built up a formidable case for being accepted as a significant painter ... she is a serious artist with an individual vision".
Her last exhibition was a three-person show (with Naren Chitty, and Mano Madewella) at the Lionel Wendt gallery in the late 70s. In later life, she also taught art at the Chitra Lane school for the specially-abled.
Jayawardana passed away on 27 April 1978. She left behind two sons, Christopher and Arjuna Parakrama (Prof. English at Peradeniya) and two daughters, Romany and Shehara de Silva.
Tributes
... [Y]ou must leave something you when you die; a book a painting or house or wall built or garden grown ... something your hand has touched so your soul has somewhere to go when you die and when anyone looks at that tree or that book you're there ... and if you look at it that way, Sita left something of herself everywhere you care to look; a million words beautifully spoken in stage and film and radio written and printed in a wide variety of letters, journals, newspapers, a hundred paintings here, there, and everywhere, innumerable generous words and deeds, a lot of warmth and affection ... She was always a woman of quality and though she really fretted her last weary hour away, she never forgot another's needs and never opted out.
— Jeane Pinto, An appreciation (May 1978)[citation needed]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://www.films.lk/sansare-sinhala-film-81.html
- ↑ Options, B. T. (2011-12-01). "Designs of a Lifetime". Explore Sri Lanka. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
General footnotes
- 'Eda Rae', Director : Shanthi Kumar; camera T S Mani; Music : Mohamed Ghouse; Lyrics D T Fernando, Louis Rodrigo, Herby Seneviratne, Thilakasiri Fernando, Sita Jayawardena (Chandra), Shanthi Kumar (Ranjith), Herby Seneviratne (Banda), Austin Abeysekera (Mudali), Michael Sannasliyanage (Victor), Premanath Moraes (Lakdasa). Released on 14 February 1953 at Elphinstone (Maradana) and 4 other centres through Ceylon Theatres circuit. Latha Walpola's debut as a playback singer.The story was based on social reform and took a subject slightly more meaty than most of the formula song and dance love stories. It dealt with the love of a Harijan (low caste untouchable) for the daughter of a rich landlord of a high caste.
- http://www.films.lk/sansare-sinhala-film-81.html
- The Colombo '43 Group was a school of modern mid 20th-century painting in Sri Lanka, established in 1943. The group was essentially an association of like-minded painters who had broken away from the Ceylon Society of Arts, led by photographer and critic Lionel Wendt, including key members Harry Pieris, George Keyt, Justin Daraniyagala, Ivan Peries, Aubrey Collette, Richard Gabriel, Geoffrey Beling, George Claessen, Swanee Jayawardene, and L T P Manjusri Thero. Lester James Peries became a latter associate of the group. The paintings of the group constituted a historic break in Sri Lankan and, more generally, South Asian tradition.
- Neville Weeraratne "Applause at the Wendt- celebrating 50 years at the lionel Wendt Theatre 1953–2003 newspaper cutting…XXX
- 'Art', limited edition (500 copies) published in 1970, by the Lionel Wendt Arts Centre
- "Chapter 4, Essay by Sali and Sita Parakrana in Art", limited edition (500 copies) published in 1970, by the Lionel Wendt Arts Centrex. Newspaper review unknown reviewer, Pic enclosed
- Ceylon Observer interview 26 July 1972 "Theatre on the Move" by Arjuna
This article "Sita Jayawardana" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Sita Jayawardana. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
