A Sinhala adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s La Cantatrice ChauveThatta Gaayikaawa is a Sinhala adaptation of Romanian-born French playwright Eugène Ionesco’s absurd anti-play La Cantatrice Chauve.

In Thatta Gaayikaawa, we meet Mr & Mrs Perera, a middle class couple who live in Kandy, and their seemingly-uninvited guests Mr & Mrs Silva. Their encounter with yet another unexpected visitor—the fire department chief—opens up a Pandora’s box of uncomfortable questions and truths that they have been avoiding for most of their lives. Who are these people? Are they actually who they think they are? What secrets lie beneath their polite conversations?

The fire chief is keen on extinguishing all fires in the city: a total “cleaning” mission! As the play progresses, the living room conversation drifts unexpectedly towards more sinister episodes in the surrounding socio-political landscape. Thatta Gaayikaawa poses complex questions about human relations by displacing and dislocating some of the often taken-for-granted conventions and social norms. This displacement is often juxtaposed against key existential questions. It explores issues related to language and communication. In short, what is the function of language? Can we communicate with language?

Translated into Sinhala by Kanchuka Dharmasiri and Lohan Gunaweera, Thatta Gaayikaawa won the state literary award for best theatre translation in 2017.