The Sound of the Drum: Bringing a South Asian tale to the Binghamton stage

Back home in Sri Lanka, Lakshmi Damayanthi Bulathsinghala is a celebrity: a renowned performer on stage and screen, a producer and an author.

At Binghamton University, she is a tenure-track instructor in theatre, known for her scholarship on South Asian theatrical forms and the classes she offers in traditional South Asian performance styles, including dance, drama, and singing. She’s also a two-time Binghamton alumna, earning her master’s in Theatre in 2010 and her doctorate in Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture in 2018.

Although she has lived in Binghamton for more than 15 years, she is still closely connected to her homeland. “I go back and forth to do my work in Sri Lanka,” explained Bulathsinghala, noting that both her creative and her scholarly work are rooted there.

This fall, she will bring both sides of her career together when she directs the musical Bera Handa; the title means “the sound of the drum.” The music and dance of South Asia are central to the show, and Bulathsinghala is teaching the performers the basics, as she has done for years in the courses she has taught at Binghamton.

Bera Handa will run from Nov. 16 through 19 in Watters Theater. It will be the first time that this classic musical drama, freshly translated into English, will be performed in the West.

Bera Handa is itself a cross-cultural endeavor: playwright Bandhula Jayawardhana adapted it from Ichneutae, a fragment of an ancient Greek play by Sophocles, and infused it with Sri Lankan folklore. Bulathsinghala is deeply familiar with the play, which was first produced in the 1960s. She starred in a 1997 production that gave her the opportunity to work closely with Jayawardhana, and then produced, directed and starred in the play again in 2006.

“Sri Lanka has a rich culture of dance and folklore. What the playwright of Bera Handa did was adapt this fragmentary play by Sophocles to suit the audience in Sri Lanka using elements like demons and traditional dance, music and drums,” Bulathsinghala said.

So how did a well-known Sinhalese performing artist end up in Binghamton?

East and West

Years ago, Bulathsinghala met Albany-based singer, songwriter and educator Ruth Pelham in Sri Lanka, where the latter traveled to participate in a show commissioned for World Children’s Day. Bulathsinghala was the choreographer and the singing coach for this program and trained disadvantaged children to take part in the show, which traveled throughout the country.

Afterward, Pelham invited Bulathsinghala to perform with her in Albany and also encouraged her to pursue a graduate degree in the United States. When Bulathsinghala searched for master’s programs in theatre in the New York area, Binghamton was the first to come up.

It was her second master’s in theatre: Bulathsinghala also earned a graduate degree from the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka. She focused on directing in her Binghamton master’s program; in her doctoral work, she focused on the history and theory of Sri Lankan theatre, which has its origins in the traditional rituals and folk dramas of the Sinhala people.

Since 2013, Bulathsinghala has developed and taught courses on South Asian dance, theatre, dance-drama styles and Indian vocal music, as well as South Asian culture and society, women’s lives in South Asia and women in film.

“My life is like a dream right now because I never thought that I would be a scholar or university professor,” she said. “I love my dancing, singing, and acting career; the stage was my life.”

Her career continued apace in Sri Lanka as well; in 2018, she produced and starred in the 47-episode television series Sulanga Mahameraka, and is currently planning another series. A feature film that she produced will be premiered in January 2024 in Sri Lanka, while preparations are underway for her next film, which will be set in both Sri Lanka and the U.S., with Binghamton University serving as a main filming location.

In 2018, she also released a book of Sinhalese poetry, Viraha, and is under contract to publish two more books: a novel called Amuththek Awidin (“A Stranger’s Arrival”), and Dakunu Asiyanu Natya Kalawa: Indiyanu Sampradaaya (“South Asian Drama: The Indian Tradition”), an educational text. Her first scholarly book in the United States, The Legacy of Stylistic Theatre in the Creation of a Modern Sinhala Drama in Sri Lanka, is slated for release by Routledge next year.

Rehearsals are already underway for Bera Handa, which Bulathsinghala will keep as traditional as possible, even with the language change. There are differences, however: in Sri Lanka, the original cast was exclusively male except for the forest goddess (the role she took in 1997 and 2006). At Binghamton, the situation will be reversed, with every part but one played by women.

In translation

There aren’t many students from Sri Lanka on campus, but several are involved in the production.

Bulathsinghala’s daughter, Gayani, is a costume designer and will create the headdresses and design the makeup used for the performance; she is also a graduate of the master’s program in Theatre. Sula Mahagam Arachchi, a doctoral student in the Translation, Research and Instruction Program (TRIP), has translated the playscript into English. The assistant choreographer, Jithendra Vidyapathy, is also from Sri Lanka and is currently a student in the Theatre master’s program.

“It’s a challenge to translate the text, to reset it to the original Sri Lankan music and make it scan in English,” Bulathsinghala said. “But what I like about Binghamton is that the students who participate in our program love challenges and exploring new avenues. They’re very brave, and I have already experienced that in this production.”

No matter the culture of origin, theater requires teamwork and a director seeks to facilitate this, she added.

“We have a very good group of faculty and staff who are coming together to make this production a reality,” she said. “And students from other departments, not only Theatre, audition for our departmental shows, so I am looking forward to the final outcome of this broad creative collaboration.”