Newly Creating Traditions within the Modernist Movements: Reading “Maname” from a New Marxist Perspective.

Abstract

Eric Hobsbauwm and Terence Ranger, the Marxist critics have studied the colonial conventions and have revealed the fact that many of those conventions which existed as old and classical had been the newly created ones. Depicting those newly created traditions as classical traditions of many centuries is also another significant fact. According to the critics Richard Gombrich, Gananath Obeyesekere and Nihal Perera, Buddhism which exists at present in Sri Lanka is also a modernist movement in the colonial era, yet, it has been pretended to the ordinary man as a classical tradition. Buddhism may have existed thousand years ago, yet, it completely deviates from what is actually exists today. According to the theoretical approach of ‘newly creating the tradition’, the major goal of this research was studying “Maname” by Ediriweera Sarachchandra. As per Sarachchandra, there is no any traditional classical Sinhala drama. But there was a traditional drama culture within the Indian subcontinent. He believes that local drama and theatre can be identified in early Sokari, Kolam and Nadagam traditions as he has recurrently mentioned in his academic studies. He identifies them as cultural elements which mirror the local identity. Yet they are visible all over the Indian subcontinent. Therefore it is problematic whether those traditions actually indicate the local identity. “Stylistic” is a noteworthy feature of sophisticated European drama too and it is an illusion to consider it as an oriental feature. Stage, on which the play was performed, is a platform open to three sides. The audience is able to watch the drama being on a ground floor. This cannot be found in Sri Lankan drama culture. Sarachchandra’s stage was either the “Platform Stage” or the “Proscenium Stage” which did not have common features of a real theatre. On the contrary, “Maname” mirrors a modernist perspective. Earlier it rigidly signified the concept of criticizing woman’s capriciousness as same as the original story. But with the influence of the movie “Rashoman” later it attributed a curious and a disputable conclusion. Although the critics recurrently signify “Maname” as the pursuit of local drama, it is obvious that “Maname” is also a new creation of Modernist movement. The complete methodological approach of the study consisted of qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. Thus, 5 scholars were interviewed and previous research articles, scholarly articles, books, online sources and audible and visual sources were also analysed in order to collect data. Hence it was revealed that “Maname” was not a product of local drama but a new creation of modern era. On the other hand the cultural elements used in this creation do not belong to the local background of the country. Thus, “Maname” is not a part of an immortal local tradition but a modern drama.