Walking new paths

Saturday, 15 November 2014 00:08 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Brilliant and brave are two appropriate words to describe Ruwanthie de Chickera. Her latest venture, a play without words titled ‘Walking Path,’ is returning to the Lionel Wendt on 21 and 22 November. It will be staged at 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Grab your tickets for a thought provoking and unique experience. In an interview with the Weekend FT, ahead of the play Ruwanthie shared her thoughts on ‘Walking Path’ and as per her usual style presented stark insights into Sri Lanka’s society. Following are excerpts:

Was there any special reason for bringing ‘Walking Path’ back on the boards?

We only ran it for two days when we opened in July. It was something new and we were not sure how the audience would take to it. But the response has been overwhelming. So we feel that there are more people who would want to see this play, now that they have heard about it. The word has gotten out about the play – that it is something new and unusual, we have had excellent reviews – there are students of theatre who want to see it, because of its style; the play has been selected for an international theatre festival in December. All these are reasons for staging it again…

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the role of satire in provoking people to act or think differently about their political environment. Do you see ‘Walking Path’ as satire? What sort of response would you like to see from the audience?

Satire is an exaggerated form of expression. Its purpose is to ridicule vices in society through exaggerated portrayal of reality. ‘Walking Path’ does not slip into this definition easily… one of our reviewers recently said of ‘Walking Path’: ‘Too often, we lampoon politicians and external figures without looking within ourselves and questioning our tacit complicity in allowing Colombo to become what it is. Walking Path did just that. The play was conceived after careful observation of the subject matter, and it was interesting to see how very little was exaggerated in this satirical enterprise. Walking Path held up a mirror to its audience, through which they would have seen many reflections of themselves.’ (Shanaka Amarasinghe) So, I think rather than satire, it is a reflection of society. We worked very hard to control the acting of the performers, control the portrayal of our observations so that we leave the maximum space for people to interpret the action on stage , without us ‘poking’ an opinion onto a situation.

Do you think ‘Walking Path’ is seen in too political a light? What other elements would you like the audience to relate to?

I don’t think art can be too political. But I think it can be too pedantic and too preachy… and then, for me, it ceases to be art, it becomes propaganda or awareness building or mobilisation… For something to remain within the realm of art, no matter how political it gets, it needs to be balanced perfectly with craft and control, be non-judgmental. There needs to be space for whoever watches it, whoever, to enter into negotiation with it. There has to be insight, there has to be an attempt at reaching for higher understanding of a situation by travelling deeper and yet deeper. There has to be self reflection. This is the fine balance that all artistes need to keep. Sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed. Just because a play is political, it should not cease to be everything else that draws people closer towards insight and deeper understanding of life. So, I would like to think that ‘Walking Path,’ like the other work we have created is also really funny and human and terribly sad and occasionally wise and bold and shocking and strange all of this together and in turn. I would like to think it caters to the whole human experience – emotional, intellectual, spiritual, political, sexual, personal, collective. This is the place of deep learning.

‘Walking Path’ is the first non-language drama ever staged in Sri Lanka and has received rave reviews. Would you do more plays like this in the future? Do you believe it should become a genre in its own right locally?

The decision to take language out came out of the process of creating the play, because we created the play by visiting the walking paths and observing the behaviour of the people there. In the walking paths, everything can be seen and every little can be heard. So we see this human behaviour and we form our own opinions about what is happening. Everyone is on display – everyone is watching everyone else. There are many layers of being observed. The people exercising watching each other, the people watching the people exercising, the people outside the park who watch the people in the parks, the military who are watching everyone – and someone is always watching the military… In this situation, it seemed ridiculous to try and limit and trap and define situations with words, because this is not the language of these parks. So that was our journey which brought us to taking out words. But having done that, I feel that it has been a very liberating experience, creatively. And I see a huge amount of potential for exploring this further. So yes, I do hope that more plays will go down this path.

One could argue ‘Walking Path’ expertly fuses performers of different backgrounds to communicate with one specific class of people as walking paths are largely limited to the upper middle class, aspirational and urbanised community. Yet this same class is often accused of being the most apathetic when it comes to politics and policies depicted in the drama. Therefore do you feel ‘Walking Path’ could communicate with a wider audience? Could it find a resonance with such an audience?

I think the biggest mistake that people can make is to think ‘we are not portrayed in ‘Walking Path’ because we don’t visit the walking paths and so this play is not for us’… If the walking paths only cater to a certain class in our society, then this is a huge problem. This is an issue.

Since when are places of public recreation open to only certain classes? This was not the situation a few years back. Recreation is not a prerogative of the rich. If people of a certain class are made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in these places, what is happening to our society? Who do we think we are? What do we think we are becoming? Both kinds of people – those who feel welcome in these walking paths and those who feel unwelcome in these walking paths need to address these questions. With regards to the political apathy of the class of people who patronise these parks, well… development of a society is not new stones laid out on the pavement or nicely cut lawns. We have to develop our society from within. We have to address the dirt, the issues on the inside – not focus on cleaning up the surface. We continue to fool ourselves into thinking that we are a better people, we are a developed people because our city looks and smells better… this is just foolish. We are nothing but a deeply, deeply, terminally sick, broken and malfunctioning patient with a ridiculous facelift.

At the end of the play one person breaks away from the suppressive system but with drastic consequences. Is ‘Walking Path’ a play without hope? If there is hope where would an audience find it?

A: The tragedy of what happens at the end to the one person who questions the system is not what is meted out to him by the establishment. I don’t think there has ever been faith in the establishment. But there has been faith in the people. In the structures of civil society. In the courage of ordinary people who will stand up for someone else’s right to justice. In this play, the person is attacked by the establishment and then ignored by the people. The people of the walking path continue to run by, looking away. This is the situation of ‘no hope’ that is so crippling. The fear that when we fall victim in this system, no one will help us. Our society is paralysed by this fear. This fear of isolation. And this makes us very weak. But it is only we who can change this. This is not a play without hope. It’s a play that challenges us to create the hope that we all need. No one else needs be responsible for this. We need to do it ourselves. We need to stop running round and round in circles, blinkered, imagining that because we are jogging in pretty parks in the city, that everything is ok with the country.