His journalism contributed to creative relationship between spectator and actor

Indian mythology places the incidence of theatre’s origin in the area of the actors, what we call the stage. Chinese mythology, even older, identifies the origin of theatre in the area directly opposite to the performers’ space, in the physically seated audience facing the stage.

The Chinese fable of the origin of theatre is the story of the pre-human woman Xua Xua and the man she happened to have a child by, Li Peng.

To reduce it to essentials, Xua thought of her son as part of herself. As he grew up though, the boy left the mother to live and hunt with his father. She watched from the opposite side of the field. She looked for answers about what she thought was the loss of her possession by looking at herself which meant also looking beyond. She realized that when she looked at her son performing in a different area, he was at the same time also her possession, though seen on what she thought was the opposite side. At that moment, she was at one and the same time, Actor and Spectator. She was SpectActor. Theatre was discovered.

Nihal Ratnaike’s crucial contribution to the hugely creative relationship between spectators and actors in the decades of the ’60s and ’70s of Lankan theatre was his cultivation of the spectator. He did this through continuous informed journalism of what actors and directors were doing. He brought one part of theatre, the potential spectator to consciousness of the other part of theatre.

With no formal training in theatre, his close friendships ranging across the theatre spectrum from Chitrasena to Breckenridge gave him the know-how he was naturally inclined to. His journalism then went on to link his readers, spect-actors or spectators with actors and directors.

I knew him well, and our discourses on theatre were many, not excluding mirth-filled banter on its periphery, at the Lionel Wendt Arts Centre. So, Nihal wherever he is now, will laughingly agree that Shakespeare being uninformed about Samsara and Nirvana would describe his exit on December 4, 2021 as a journey to “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.”