Checkpoint – Three Plays
Checkpoint – in its second or so run – is still the most relevant Sri Lankan play I’ve ever seen. It is, by turns, funny, thought-provoking and deeply disturbing. It’s running for one more night at the British School, I’d recommend seeing it if you can. I may be messing up the names, but the play was written by Ruwanthie de Chickera and it is very Sri Lankan – funny, miserable and startlingly brutal. It opens with a classic tale of a fateful bus-ride, narrated with apt face by Gihan de Chickera. It was hilarious and sad all at once, which is in many ways the Sri Lankan condition. The other plays were more war related and the new items were really on point. What they capture is not so much an answer as the mediarrhea that plagues the country and the division the conflict strikes through friends and families.
Saturation Media Bombing
The next scene honestly made me cover my head in discomfort at one point, but it was brilliantly done. They took one day – August 14th – and scripted three or four scenes directly out of quotes from the various news sources. What it captured for me is one of the greatest tragedies of the war – that no one knows what’s going on. Every media report is so unreliable and biased that things get polarized very fast. TamilNet and the Daily News cover the same ‘news’, but if you read just one you’d have an entirely opposed perceptions. And they’re both wrong. You have to read 17 biased sources to even come close to an accurate picture, and that’s like reconstructing the gospels of donkeys.
One scene consisted of S running an auction for news items with a mind-numbing litany of body-counts and government/LTTE statements. There were two sides each repeating their figures into a mind-numbing blur. Which is true. When there’s a bombing or something even the Colombo newspapers have different bodycounts, sometimes within the same article. That’s the problem with the truth. You bend it once to make yourself look good and pretty soon you have no idea what’s going on.
Another scene was Nimmi and Tracy playing macabre school children as varying reports of the orphanage/training-camp bombing were read. At the beginning I learned over and insisted that it wasn’t an orphanage, but by the end I felt so physically uncomfortable that the distinction didn’t matter. The two characters were dressing dolls in uniforms, coating them in syringes of blood and tearing them apart with corkscrews. Again, all the bodycounts blurred together and all you could hear were children/dead/children. As with all the news, the facts disappear into bias and posturing and all you’re left with is human misery.
Forum Theatre
I managed to naff up my participation by calling Sophist an ass and drawing an uncomfortable silence. Made me twitchy the rest of the night. I should apologize, it was a bad joke and he was one of the more charismatic performers.
The theme here was kinda weird cause I felt like I knew the characters. In fact, the two main have left comments here. This happy-go-lucky fellow Rajiv (Tamil, married to a Sinhala) had invited an old friend (Prakash) to stay at home. His brother-in-law recognized the fellow as an infamous doctor who’d once operated on LTTE Cadres before leaving the country. The brother-in-law wanted to report the fellow to the police, and hence the dillema the audience was to solve.
This dilemma was especially personal because it felt like I had the conversations before. My friend works for the TRO and is currently having some difficulty re-entering the country. I don’t agree with a lot of what he says or his organization so much, but I do realize that they are the only NGO that really serves those people. I just remember that during the tsunami the TRO ran all the camps up there. But anyways, I know this guy more as a guy that I’ve had drinks and hung out with. We’ve corresponded and we have huge differences, but I still think he’s a lovely bugger and consider him a friend. I leaned to the girlfriend and said I’d let him stay without hesitation, but she said that she would hesitate. For good reason, actually. The play made almost too much sense.
In the play Jagath was a self-righteous boor who was taking charge of a situation that the husband (Rajiv) and wife should have rightly settled. The audience’s solution was for the wife to talk to Prakash and then assert her authority to Jagath. Which did settle the matter. But makes you wonder. I don’t know if the matter is settled, as long as you have
Friends and Terrorists
A lot of moderate Tamils and Sinhalese I know will condemn the LTTE, but they’ll also say that the LTTE at least stood up for Tamils. With all the riots and bellicosity of various governments, there was definitely an ethnic problem before there was a terrorist problem. The failures of all the various (X)-Chelvanayakam pacts meant that Tamil concerns were unaddressed until the LTTE started ‘doing something’. I and even some of the people I was arguing with would say that the LTTE has just made the situation worse, but they did ‘do something’. Whatever it was, no one thinks Tamils are weak anymore. I know a lot of ‘moderate’ people who think this way.
Anyways, people roundly condemn the LTTE and say anything LTTE associated is bad, but I think that ignores the problem. I have very rational and intelligent friends that sympathize with the LTTE. I find this repugnant, but I am trying to understand. They are my friends and they’re not stupid. I mean, my own people call for killing NGO workers and outbreeding the Muslims, some on this very blog. As Blacker said, if the Sinhalese were a minority I’d probably be expressing tacit support for some vicious Sinhala Lions.
It seems to me that the LTTE has taken a very grey ethnic issue and drawn a bloody line down the middle. In many ways the cause is just, but they don’t have a Mandela or Martin Luther King type figure to lead them. Instead they have the bloodiest thug to rise out of a fucked up situation. But that doesn’t make the cause untrue. It just makes it whole lot harder to work things out without being beat over the head with ‘terrorist’ on one end and ‘sinhala chauvanist’ on the other. It’s like all the good ideas got bombed to shit and we’re stuck in these dyametrical refugee camps of words. And I just want to go out with my friend. Meh.
That’s why I say addressing the ethnic problem is vital to defeating the LTTE militarily. We yell terrorist all we want and eat righteousness for breakfast, but it won’t win the war. Until we make our Tamil friends and neighbors feel like they have something invested in the government, we’re just playing endless whack-a-mole.
Stages Theatre Group – stagestheatregroup.wordpress.com
I want to visit my friend in China before he comes back. Free place to crash and all. So, I applied for a visa to China, from Colombo. I’m not sure I’ll get it, but this is process to at least apply. For official but incomplete info, check out the 
The Mahavamsa (a history of Sri Lanka) is full of conflicts between generals and kings. Usually, the more bloodthirsty and unscrupulous would win. Our current (elected) ruler Mahinda Rajapaksa has had his own general conflicts, namely with one Sarath Fonseka. In the old days Fonseka would have staged a coup, as in literally try to cut of Mahinda’s head, and Mahinda would – if that failed – tie him to four elephants and split his parts asunder. Can’t do that shit anymore. Instead Fonseka ran for office and lost and Mahinda tossed him in jail.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
“Anyways, people roundly condemn the LTTE and say anything LTTE associated is bad, but I think that ignores the problem. I have very rational and intelligent friends that sympathize with the LTTE. I find this repugnant, but I am trying to understand.”
You wanna understand why? simple. it’s money. find out the job they do and the way they spend money. also the recently added new house, new car etc. some are directly linked. some get funds to help the people effected by war or tsunami. make project reports, get funds, do something to those poor people, then take photo’s or record what they did, get more funds. So why on earth they should NOT be sym-pathatic to LTTE?
to help people, you need people who need help. sri lanka is one of the key places where you get enough of people who need help thanks to LTTE and the tsunami. also they have to help the Christians effected by Buddhist extremists.
you name the type of help needed, we have it. mostly thanks to LTTE.
The play sounds interesting, havent really seen too many political productions in SL. What you say indi is true, people who say there is or has been no ethnic people are just plain fucking stupid. And the LTTE’s purported cause is just, but I just don’t understand the viewpoint of people who support them. Thats simply because on one hand they say they fight for Tamil self-determination, but they kill anyone who doesnt toe their line. What I find amazing is the number of Tamils who otherwise seem moderate who don’t seem to find any issue with that. Until they stand up and say enough AND crucially the Sinhala stand up with them, nothing will change. It seems so painfully obvious…
I think a lot of moderates feel that without the LTTE Tamil concerns won’t be addressed at all. In a way it’s true, even during the cease-fire I, for one, was talking about Colombo social scene and what. However, their terrorism doesn’t make the debate anymore civil. It just emboldens the extremists on the Sinhala side and drive the country towards division. I guess that’s the point, but it leaves a lot of people stranded in the middle
I loved watching Gihan De Chickera again, he’s a brilliant mime and has incredible bodily control, I watched it on the first night, and although the forum piece was slightly disjointed, they got a hot doctor from the audience to join in (turned out he was a Doctor of Economics). The second piece—24 Hours, was interesting for it’s experimental nature, and although was stretched and repeated ad nauseum, I didn’t find myself so much startled as I was de-sensitised. Props to Ruwanthie though, for experimenting with dramatic versatility in the 2.5 hours she had a captive audience.
I think we have come to a sort of a equlibrium in the Blogosphere. Every ‘side’ of this debate seems to be saying more or less the same thing a bit differently. From the blanket bashing of all NGOs/LTTE/peace-activist to the ‘moderate view’ of ‘lets give a solution first and deal with the LTTE’.
personally, im getting a bit tired of this whole thing. beggning to think (in fact i know) it’s not worth the time or the brain crunching. but i guess talking is always good.
cheers
Deane. :)
Two things surprised me about yesterday’s audience. Firstly that not one person thought Prakash was LTTE – even in the face of indisputable facts. Secondly that several people – despite the character’s relative low profile – found Rajive the most central character in all of it.
Reading your post Indi I’m surprised you go as far as calling Jagath a self righteous boor. Was none of his concern legitimate, once again in the face of the circumstances revealed in the plot?
One person in the audience said he’s not an LTTEr he’s a sympathiser.
I’m just insanely happy that the audiece, or at least some members of it, have acknowledged the distinction between Tamils and Terrorists no matter how blurred that distinction might sometimes seem.
His concerns are valid, I just felt like he was bullying Rajiv. Rajiv was hilarious btw. I think it’s a bit presumptuous to go into a friends house and tell him that you’re going to call the cops. Is it actually a crime to operate on injured LTTE cadres? I’m not sure. Plus he was doing the classic Sri Lankan thing of speaking for a woman (his sister in law) without really letting her state her own case.
an injurred person becomes a non-combatant according to the Geneva Convention and thus a doctor MUST treat him or her.
Personally, from yesterday’s post, I didn’t think that it was all indisputable that the character Prakash was LTTE. His writing, Rajiv said, was balanced and that indicates that he is apt to criticize the LTTE sometimes. LTTEers are nver really in the habit of criticizing themselves are they? So, it was unlikely that he was LTTE. Plus, the mere fact that he operated on LTTE cadre, or that he has connections to the LTTE does not mean he is LTTE himself. As was so correctly pointed out, the distinction is a lot more complicated for Sri Lankan Tamils, especially those from Jaffna. Almost everybody must have a few friends and relatives in the organisation. You can’t help being connected, therefore.
[...] Last night’s forum theatre piece was on theme of the ethnic conflict and the stem outlined a specific thorny issue faced by five characters in Wellawatte. The actors in this piece dealt with the difficult subject matter with fantastic insight into their characters’ mindsets. And get this: two of them happened to have argued and thrashed out similar issues on this blog, and also on indi.ca. (See Sophist and Aadhavan’s comments on “Give the Sinhalese a Fucking Break”). I was told by Sophist he used the blog discussions to help prepare for the role.  [...]
[...] Besides being technically perfect, the three parts of the show succeed at tackling, in different ways, the tensions that come from being a country at war with part of itself. It’s too bad tonight was the end of the run – this show should go on the road around Sri Lanka, and be performed for anyone who has an opinion. Indi and Ravana both give it the thumbs up. [...]