The return of the ‘greased devils’

Saturday, 16 August 2014 00:10 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

You remember the phenom which gripped our psyche sometime back. It had the whole country by its cojones. In city, town, and village, fear spread like, well, like grease on gudgeon pins. No one was safe from these greasy scoundrels who would pull a heist here or cop a squeeze there. God only knew who they were behind their smeary disguises. God, and whoever else put these ghouls up to their mischief. Speculation was rife. Terror was rifer. People everywhere were ripe to be plucked like chickens. Someone was pulling strings pizzicato behind the scenes, and the national psyche was overripe with rumours and allegations and counteraccusations. Let bygones be bygones, and allow sleeping dogs to lie gently in their godless graves? No, not the players of Ananda Drama and their perverse if talented muse and amanuensis. On two edgy, energetic nights at the end of last week, they poked the ghosts with an annoying and inquisitive stick.

Grease Yaka: A devised theatre production presented by AnandaDrama in collaboration with Stages Theatre Group, directed by Ruwanthie De Chickera, on 8 and 9 August, from 7:30 p.m. onwards for an average of one hour and 15 minutes every night, at the Lionel Wendt Theatre. Grease Yaka, as the program proclaimed, “is a play about fear”. It is also a play about paranoia and the politics of social manipulation. The presentation tried very hard to perform investigative surgery on personal and corporate fears. And how they feed into galloping social phobias. It was a bold attempt to address in relatively private dramatic form an autopsy that appears to be un-doable by public institutions like the police. And it succeeded in some measure in awakening small but captive audiences to “the power, reach and depth of its [social phobias’] impact on people”.

The production was inquisitive to a fault, probing hidden agendas and vested interests with a vengeance. As the blurb said, “Grease Yaka charts the evolution of fears in our society and examines their impact on our collective psyche.” This was evidently the award-winning director’s forte. She wove a spell over us as we saw exploding on the stage a rich mix of raw psychology. Flawed individuals. And the volatile interplay of individuals with society driven by odious opportunism. The players were amateurish in the best theatrical tradition of the word. Grease Yaka was clearly an experimental play. “Conceived, driven and devised entirely by young people,” it was “based on material developed by students and young alumni of Ananda College”. And with “input from guest actors at workshops”. And cobbled together “under the guidance of [the director] and other artistes from the Stages Theatre Group”. This aspect of the play caused some cracks in the production. While the players themselves were confident, some lines were poorly articulated. And/or drowned out by the enthusiastic support (laughter, cheers) of their equally youthful friends and family members in the balcony. At the end of a thought-provoking play, in response to the question ‘What’s the next big fear?’, the suggestion that a certain ethnic group would be made a scapegoat of was rather lamely depicted by a couple – clearly a certain ethnic group – strolling almost casually along a gantry-walkway.

The payoffs for the actors and the audience alike, however, were plentiful. The bold and courageous initiative of this dramatic combine to address controversial sociopolitical issues on a public platform is a welcome development. The originality and inventiveness of the script and presentation augurs well for the contribution that begs to be made by a new, emerging generation of players. In tandem with older and more experienced stagehands. The interest and edge-of-your-seat participation of the mixed audience of senior diplomats and dismissive schoolboys demonstrates that theatre is still a viable and an appropriate tool for exploring the dark places of our collective consciousness. The play’s the thing. But the play is not always the only thing. Colombo’s English-language theatre circuit is so small as to be nepotistic if not incestuous. Certainly there is rivalry but sometimes also closeness between players, producers, collaborators. On the acknowledgments page of the program, the cast and crew of Grease Yaka thank Mind Adventures: mentioned in some manner of thanksgiving for their contribution to this production? And then later in the same weekend the doyenne of Mind Adventures posts this on a social medium: “Ruwanthie De Chickera triumphs with ‘Grease Yaka’ which opened at the Wendt tonight. Audacious, timely and potent, seething with energy and biting satire. De Chickera’s script serves to confirm and remind us why she is our pre-eminent playwright and she has crafted outstanding performances from the AnandaDrama cast… The most vital, important piece of theatre I have witnessed this year. Exceptional work, Stages Theatre Group!” We would beg to differ, at least in parts. Particularly that bit about this being “the most vital, important piece of theatre … this year”. Have we forgotten Men Without Shadows? Mind Adventure’s own Paraya? It was a script with a difference, all right. And it got us thinking. But it got us thinking about the things we had been thinking about all along. Without adding a challenge or suggestion of its own. We saw in the issues raised issues that bedevil our times. We felt in the themes dealt with a sense of the tragedy and terror that can descend like greased lightning on an unsuspecting and unprotected polity. We heard in the story so chillingly narrated an echo of the very exigencies to which we as a nation and a people had been subjected to, and continue to be at the mercy of. But we left the theatre wondering whether snide asides about Four Opportunists who prey on vulnerable people was sufficient in our day and age. True we all laughed at the witticisms and wisecracks about ‘fatty oils’ cowering in fear while stuffing their faces. And ‘beauty oils’ pandering to their vanity while the world falls apart in fear. And we nodded knowingly at ‘dog blood [and] beggar blood on the racing car’. There was that last twist of the knife missing, though. If this combine devises that production again, let there be more than a mere description of reality satirically presented. Let the play have more bite than bark. Because we’re still wondering who let the dogs out in the first place, and when and where they’ll attack next? So desperate times call for desperate remedies. And not only cleverly constructed remembrances of horrors past. The play’s only the beginning.