This is not a play… It’s only a parody

Saturday, 30 August 2014 03:33 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

It was so bleeding obviously a gun. A great big cannon like the mock ones at one end of Galle Face Green. The sign said “This is NOT a Gun.” Even though it was obvious to everybody that it was. Point was that it was a gun that was not meant to be a gun. It wasn’t, yet it so obviously was. It was less obviously a sign. A symbol. The gun with the notice saying “This Is Not A Gun” was a sign of our times. A

symbol of our militarised shame culture. That culture which is so bleeding obviously militarised. But is also often secretly ashamed of some of its excesses. So ashamed that it needs to pretend – and it needs it citizens to pretend – that a gun is not a gun. Except when it is. Especially when it is. The play was achingly obviously a satire on our society. Everything was what it was. And yet nothing was what it seemed to be. A runaway monk still commanded the respect of the cops who questioned him and venerated him at the same time. In quick turns of mind and attitude. An eccentric vagrant rummaged in the garbage pile for potential jobs, pathetically discarded. The police allowed themselves to be interrogated. While making a mockery of the process with their topsy-turvy approach to law and order. That gun stayed where it was. No matter how fast or how far the absconding pillion-riding monk and his

vagabond rider rode. There was a very real sense in which this was not a play. But a parody of everyday life in a crooked, crazy country. ‘MEYA THUWAKKUWAK NOVEY’: A very short play. On a very short run. One night only at the Wendt! On Wednesday, 20 August. After popular demand brought about this riveting play, originally performed sometime back in May this year, for a very short reprise. Written and directed by a maverick but mature young newcomer to mainstream theatre. Chamila Priyanka’s ‘This Is Not A Gun’ performed by Youth Create and sponsored in a novel sort of way by Naatti-Seettu, a combine to promote original theatre. Some themes dominated the short duration of one hour. Which was a surprisingly truncated showing for a widely-publicised play at the Wendt. There was the politics of religion and the religion of politics. There was ethnic militarism and militant ethnocentric chauvinism. There was The Law as lawmaker and lawbreaker and law-perverter all rolled into one. One wishes some plays were shorter. But one wanted this one not to stop when and where it did. We did not want to go back to the evil and twisted realities that this not-a-play was depicting so entertainingly. And alarmingly. Maybe its strength was in how closely its art imitated the real life from which it drew. But the grist for its mill was quite sophisticated for a debutante director’s maiden offering. It was sociopolitical satire. But not the kind of issues where audiences are in fits or stitches because they recognise or think they recognise the politician who’s being lampooned. No one sniggered and whispered to their companions, “Ah, that’s that Silva,” or tittered and whispered back, “No, no, it’s the other Silva.”

Action was gritty and realistic. But not slick. Topics grabbed by the hand and taken for a twirl on the on-stage scooter which drove the action were sometimes surrealistic. The ‘secret police’ had a not-so-secret agenda. And trees and pedestrians moved towards the speeding motorcyclists rather than vice-versa. When the arrested riders pointed out that the traffic police were wearing helmets, the charge of helmet-less riding was dropped. Or forgotten. Abuse of women and minorities was amusingly presented. But uncomfortably enough to make at least some members of the audience shift agonisingly in their seats. Or cringe at the familiarity of the all-too-familiar normalcy of the perversions in our society.

Which we take for granted so long as they happen to somebody else. Theatre reviews run out of ideas and things to say sooner or later. This production shared the same fault. Though there was the distinct feeling that a lot/ quite a lot/ quite enough/ had been said about that state of the nation of a certain nation-state: topsy-turvy-dom. Then, all too soon, it was time to go home. Thinking all the way to the trishaw rank, train station or bus halt (that was this play’s audience) about how and when and where a gun is a gun is a gun. Trusting that the note to the effect that it is not is just a way of making everyone comfortable about what must make someone very uncomfortable indeed. The play was not the thing. The thing was the triumphalism with which a perverted sense of humour about the way things are has come to be our dominant thinking. The audience was laughing indulgently at its own apathy and helplessness. The humour was in our powerlessness to deal with it in real life. Thus the play that was not a play provided an outlet/ a safety valve/ to channel and flush away all our guilt and shame and fear. Catharsis on a candyfloss stick? In that sense, it was a play of and for our times. A superb vehicle, such satire. For a day and age when reality is not only as queer as we imagine but queerer than we can imagine. Gripping in its daring. Original in its vision. Thrilling in its scope. Amusing in its execution. A treat for theatre-lovers. A great vehicle for sociopolitical satirists. A not-funny-play to not-unfairly-critique our not-un-faulty society.