Ideological Crisis, Compliance, and Self-Censorship: Identifying the Symptoms of Sinhala-Speaking Theatre Through Its Responses to the Civil War

Abstract:

Although many Sinhala-speaking plays created in Sri Lanka after the 1960s focused on contemporary political and social issues, there were surprisingly few theatre productions that addressed the civil war, a significant political crisis in Sri Lanka. Additionally, those few plays that addressed the Civil War failed to provide an opposing thought to the racist ideology that led to the Civil War. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to discuss the issues that caused Sinhala-speaking theatre to pay less attention to the civil war. French philosopher Louis Althusser claimed that “The Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression” (Althusser 1971: 145). Along with the argument by Althusser, I will also explore how ideology and repression weaken the significance of the war for the Sinhala-speaking theatre during wartime.