There’s an elephant in the room

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What are you going to do about it? By Cheranka Mendis For some women, tears and silent pleas are part of their daily routine. They have developed an intimate relationship with their makeup box and the skin-coloured powder is their new best friend. Most have perfected their mask of pain with that of a smile, their eyes have lost their shine and their lips are sealed tighter than a rusted, jammed locker. If you pull hard enough, the handle may break and out will fall endless octavos of stories – laced with bitterness, pain, anger, hurt, confusion, disappointment and courage. Courage for surviving through the violence from perpetrators and their own worst enemy – themselves. Here comes April, and while most are busy formulating the best April Fool’s prank, 18 performers are getting ready to bring stories of these women out into the open. Ten stories will be belted in to one puzzle representing hundreds of marginalised women in Sri Lanka, particularly in Colombo, at the Barefoot Gallery Café by The Grassrooted Trust as part of the third installation of ‘V Day: Writing to end violence against women and girls’ under the title ‘The elephant in the room’. “We are focusing on different kinds of women that are generally marginalised – the violence they face from different perspectives, including perpetrators and violence they sometime self-inflict,” Hans Billimoria of the Trust said. No language barriers Billimoria is also one of the script writers of the skits to be performed on Tuesday. Joining him is Paba Deshapriya and Nilukshi Samdeen who has written the Sinhala and Tamil scripts respectively. “The performances are in Sinhala, English and Tamil which is unique,” he said. Subtitles will be

played on large screens during the Sinhala and Tamil performances. All three writers have been working with survivors of violence over the last few years in Sri Lanka. All stories are based on the real stories they have heard and seen. “Nothing is made up,” Billimoria said. “Granted, there is a theatre angle to it and we are not telling the same story, but the stories we portray are common stories that people will recognise when they come and watch us.” The Trust The stories are based on survivors who reached out to The Grassrooted Trust over the years. A guarantee limited company, the Trust works with marginalised people and work towards empowering them. “We believe the fundamental model for empowerment is economic empowerment. So we work to employ the people of marginalised communities,” he explained. These communities include those living with HIV, those who sell sex, use drugs, those identified as transgender, gay and bisexuals. “These are not very happy topics. These are the people who are generally judged by society. It is very difficult for them to find alternative forms of employment because of the judgement society have about them.” There is a kind of hypocrisy attached to these communities. For example, everybody is quick to judge sex workers but they have enough clients. It is that kind of justification that the Trust is trying to bring through theatre. V-Day V-Day performances originated in 1994 in New York and were introduced to Sri Lanka in 2011. Keeping to the edition of Eve Ensler’s ‘Vagina Monologues’ – the playwright who initiated the V-Day movement with her play based on interviews she had conducted with women addressing women’s sexuality and social stigma surrounding rape and abuse – the first V-Day was more American and international.

Therefore the Trust in 2012 conducted the same with a Sri Lankan twist to it. In 2013, they took the issue of incest as the topic of discussion and performed ‘Daddy: A Mad Incestuous Dance’. “We perform these on 1 April from 2011 – on April Fool’s Day. You’ve got to be a fool to do it, and you’ve got to be a fool to talk about it.” Billimoria added: “We have been doing is based on our work and the violent stories by those who come to us. We have built the scripts around that. It comes from the V-Day tradition but now it is much localised and is a Sri Lanka focused product.”

Colombo and out This year V-Day will be taken to Kurunegala end-May. They are working with local theatre groups in Kurunegala to both write the scripts and perform it to the audience. The plan is to extend it to the north next year. Theatre as a medium Through V-Day the idea is to provoke thinking: There is an elephant in the room, so what are we going to do about it? “People know about it, they experience it, but in our parts of the world people are a little shy to talk about it. As a result the other side makes use of it,” theatre veteran Jith Pieris said. “This is to create awareness of the terrible issues taking place. People are too scared to come out with it. But we do.”

Through such performances, the audience is also compelled to think about the realities of life. “Most often theatre is about escapism – comedies, fun. We see some really good, enjoyable scripts which are very Sri Lankan. But in this sense, these are true Sri Lankan scripts where we don’t allow you to escape. We take the reality and put it in front of you and let you think,” Pieris noted. For Pieris being part of the project is “wonderful because it makes us think. We can’t hide behind lines and dances. This is what is happening. We don’t pull any punches.”

The script is written and has been approved by the Censor Board and is for mature audiences only. The cast this year includes Ashini Fernando, Viranthi Cooray, Satya Bhashi, Salome De Silva, Anuruddha Fernando, Dominic Keller, Gehan Blok, Kapila Rasnayake, Pasan Ranaweera, Ryan Holsinger and Michael Holsinger, among others. Pix by Lasantha Kumara