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Ethnic War and Theatre Activities in Northern Sri lanka By T.Thevananth,M.A,MSc

Introduction

Active Theatre Movement is working with people affected by the tsunami and war, children whose studies have been disturbed and help them recover from the depression and help children resume their schooling, and listen to their problems and tell them how best they could solve them.

Our project doesn’t stop with presenting and producing a play, but we integrate into the play so many other ideas, where their problems can be discussed, where there could be an exchange of views, so that people understand their problems, in fact understand them. It’s not just performance.

In the earlier times, our practice was to go to a particular area to stage a play and then come back. Now we don’t do that, we continue our work there, so that our project doesn’t end with just staging a play there, based on the play and based on the issues raised by the play, we continue our work there.

When we work on those lines, we strike a good rapport with the people we work with and they form themselves into committees and approach the various NGOs or whatever organisations are there, and this group or committee go and demand for their rights or what should legitimately be done for them and so a lot of work has been done conducting this method.

Working with war affected children through children theatre

And as far as the children’s theatre is concerned the village school is the centre that we work in as a part. So, since that is so, we ensure that the teachers are thoroughly informed or trained in matters pertaining to the children’s theatre and then we contact the area’s education department and involve them in this so we can work with children in the school or the community.

That is a very important project of ours, working with the children in schools and involving the schools and education department; we consider it a very important project.

Children’s theatre is concerned; I think I consider that to be our most outstanding contribution. We have been successful in creating awareness, an awakening at a school level. We have trained 1220 teachers and youths last five years with the assistance our leading dramatist in Tamil Theatre, Dr,Shanmugalingham, his five children plays has been taken to more than 200 different schools in the region. The performance group often, getting on the bus and going with all the paraphernalia, not one school at once, two performances in one day. So, they had quite large no of staging, that one play had been staged more than 100 times. So, that sort of awakening and awareness, I think is going to be a very significant contribution. Before Active Theatre Movement activities (ATM) that people had to go and see the play, or come to the city and see the play, the play didn’t reach the rural areas. But, last five years, ATM has been taking drama to the remotest corner of the Jaffna peninsula. We have done, we recognised is our best contribution.

Now because of the prolonged war, in the field of drama there has been a gap, a big void that needs to be filled, and so we have us starting at a school level, but our focus has been on children, because – because of the war and poverty, the children have become too rigid, there has been no support for them to relax and be free, their freedom has become restricted and so affected by the war in many ways. When they are more relaxed they perform, they take part in performance and become really active in the theatre their performance in their regular education will be enhanced, the way education is set up, it is too exam oriented, but the children don’t have enough scope for recreation or relaxation activities. Taking drama to their level would sort of be to open them up. That will help them in their studies.

Land mine awareness

The Active Theatre Movement actually got sort of entrenched only by 2003

We started with mine awareness program from UNICEF was heading to be executed in the form of seminars, talking about, discussing matters about mines, that didn’t reach the children at all, then we took it in the form of a drama, through the theatre activities, we were able to stage the play at 137 schools, on mine awareness. We called the play ‘The Mirage’. We took that play to 137 schools and 67,000 students saw it. And the mine awareness became a reality to them, the children understood what it meant, it wouldn’t have been if it was just seminars – it would have been beyond the children’s grasp.

The first round we took the play in, the first schools, we got a lot of encouragement, a very good response and we in fact met children who had lost limbs and we were able to heal and see for ourselves what it meant to lose a foot and there was so much emotion involved and we were also affected. It was ok the first time and UNICEF wanted us to do it the following year too, repeating the same thing the following thing the next year we thought was boring and some thing missing, come on… we wanted to do more think about this land mine business. Then we moved away from that and addressed ourselves to real social issues, this is what we’re doing now

Surviving nothing more than this drama for land mines or anti-landmines, there was a need at that time… We are a bunch who can not just sit back; we needed to do something, so we needed something some action. So we got involved in something else after that

So, why we were diffident and not enthusiastic about carrying that out after the second round was, it becomes routine and monotonous and the areas UNICEF and UN rules will not permit us, do not give us the freedom to go a stage further and using our imagination. So there are restrictions, it ends up as a dull routine, out of which we have to grow.

I want to explain little bit more. In the first round of the first year, the message with the play was beware of the mines, if there is a mine field don’t go there, fine. In the second year, this was the business we found – in the society we met people, landmine victims, who are still frequenting mine fields because of their livelihood because they are poor and that is because of an economic problem, poverty. They have been deprived of their livelihood, or because they are displaced or because they don’t have a regular job, or they can’t do the job they did before. So, you still find people walking into the mine fields, when I project that, when I project the problem is poverty and unemployment and all that the government will not be amused. The UN doesn’t want to upset with the government, because it’s a tricky question. So that is how we come to a dead end, we move away from that traditionally bounded project.

So, it was against this backdrop that 2005-2007 year ATM has been working in collaboration with Christian Aid because I found them a bit perceptive and we think we have some sort of freedom there. But my general view is that you can not work with an NGO for a long time because it limits your creativity

All the time we are too careful, its easy to as money is coming in; it is not a question of accepting everything and spoiling ourselves. We are a bit careful

At the same time we have been charging to take the play to the schools, we charge 10 rupees (0.1Dollar) per ticket, because we feel that it should not be free, because we spend a lot on staging a play. Part of it is at least the playgoer should pay in principle. But, it doesn’t come anywhere near our outlay so it’s difficult, our outlay does not match the cost. But, we do charge a modest fee, just a cup of tea cost.

We are confident that as drama people, theatre people we can be useful in providing training for personality development and social mobilisation… We can do it better than most that are already in it because we are drama people. We have excellent communication skill feeling, voice and gestures we are working on it, we can be some use to the community that way.

We choose people, we prefer actors whose first concern is an interest is drama rather than the monetary benefit. So, we get people who are committed and really want to take part in drama and the payment, whatever they get from us is secondary. If somebody is keen on earning through this then this is not the place because it doesn’t pay that much, although we do pay them… Since we should not give them false hopes, because we are never sure of the dividends or the collection, so excluding our expenses and all that, the margin of profit may be minimal. So we should not give them high hopes and say they can earn so much that would be to mislead them. Still as it was in the old days, the emphasis is on the interest you have and the commitment to drama and the payment comes next.

ATM is very very small organisation with out having permanent place but it has ideal structure, there is an executive director, under him there are two branches; project and finance. Project division will handle human resources and a training centre and implementation and the finance division, is a relatively smaller unit handling the finances. Under the project division implementation of the project, we have three sub groups – children’s theatre, women’s theatre and community theatre. There would be a group leader for each group and a project officer for each project. A program manager would be in change of the whole project unit. There would be resource development officer for training purposes. There would be specialists from outside, from the community, inducted into this. There is a governing body consisting of 9 members

Conclusion

There are 400 schools here in Jaffna, so we should train the other primary school teachers that have not been trained and that will complete the training of teachers. At a primary school level we are very keen that there should be a drama culture. Every year the children in the primary schools should see a drama take place there and learn from it and appreciate it, get ideas.

There are no drama centres outside in the community, except what you have in the University, where drama and theatre is taught as a subject. We need a resource centre, not University people but where the drama people in the peninsular should have access so they can train. It should be a centre fully equipped for research.

Now there is children’s theatre, women’s theatre, community theatre… such sub-divisions of the theatre, they are in a formative stage, we should strengthen them and revitalise them so they are self reliant

Experience shows us that there were no professional artists here in this part of the country; we have never had professional actors or things like that. So, we wants to build that up so we have and those who have been involved in these things should be helped to become professionals, to be self reliant, to become engaged in drama for its own sake. We find people often do this part-time, then they become involved in something else, we want people full time, professionals. These are our plans.

When, we produced a play. First What we usually do is to produce a play that we take to different parts of the country and stage it there and give a message, what I consider our main focus or purpose is to educate the people through drama so they can understand the problems, the cause of the conflict, the dimensions of the conflict and the possible resolutions of the conflict. We give them the necessary skills for them to understand the problems, not to just be preachers and give the answers ready made or prepared. We provoke them to think, we provoke them to understand for themselves about the dimensions of the problem. They might be able to see the right perspective and decide for themselves what the best way out is.

It is not a question of just functioning as a single group and the task is a gigantic task that can not only be… achieved by us. So, all we could do is to waken up the people, so they see, to help them to see things from the right angle, the right perspective. It is only such thing that will last, we are not offering them ready made solutions, that are dried …not lasting. Trying to changing their thinking, that would be a far reaching and permanent change. It takes time, it can not be achieved in a short time and people involved might get a bit disappointed when they don’t get the desired immediate achievement