CULTURE-SRI LANKA: Group Offers the Disabled Theatre Exposure and Hope

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Apr 25 2001 (IPS) - Sunethra Bandaranaike has no qualms about projecting herself as the elder sister of Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga in raising funds from the private sector to help promote the skills and talents of disabled artists.

Her crowning moment – taking a troupe of able and disabled artists for a series of performances at a London theatre later this week. “I have no problem in saying that I am the president’s sister and that doors open for me,” she said, seated in a comfortable sofa in the family mansion at Rosmead Place, a posh residential part of the capital.

“I don’t see why I should not make use of the fact that I am the president’s sister to raise funds to highlight the plight of disabled artists. It’s all for a good cause, anyway.”

Through the Sunethra Bandaranaike Foundation formed in late 1994, Bandaranaike has been heavily involved in the arts, raising funds to run workshops across the country and spotlighting the talents of struggling artists.

Now she is taking a 45-member group of a mix of normal, poor and mentally and physically handicapped people to Britain for three performances in a 10-day period trip starting on April 28.

“I want to give these people exposure out of their own country. I want to make them more outward looking than being introverts.”

Bandaranaike is the only one in the country’s most famous family who hasn’t taken up politics. Her father, Solomon Dias was prime minister in the 1950s before being assassinated in 1959 while mother Sirimavo, who died last year, has been prime minister on at least three occasions.

Her brother Anura is currently the speaker of parliament and an opposition United National Party (UNP) MP while the best known of the Bandaranaike clan is Kumaratunga who has been the country’s president since late 1994.

“I never wanted to go into politics. I found politics corrupt and cynical,” she said recalling her post-university days when she helped her mother as a part-time political worker.

She said she enjoyed working with women and discussing their problems during the early 1970s when crisscrossing the country with her mother who was the prime minister, but was disillusioned by politicians who weren’t interested in the people, particularly women.

“The women just wanted to be engaged in some income-generating work so that there would be some meaning in their lives. They were not asking for much, just some work to give them some self-respect. I became very disillusioned with the political setup,” she noted.

While Bandaranaike has achieved a lot in bringing the problem and issues of Sri Lanka’s disabled people to the fore, she is honest to admit that her foray into the performing arts by the disabled was totally by accident.

She was once asked to witness a local workshop for disabled people run by her longtime friend, Wolfgang Stange, a German director who runs his own AMICI Dance Theatre Company in London and has been visiting Sri Lanka for many years on similar missions.

“I sat in a corner and watched for two hours and it was unbelievable. I was so moved not out of pity for these people but for what they are capable of doing. I couldn’t believe the talents of these people,” she said.

Bandaranaike was like a wandering soul at that time. With time on her hands and two failed marriages behind her, she was drawn to culture and the arts, and sensing a need to help struggling artistes, set up the foundation to promote the performing arts.

She sold some property, put the money in a trust and from its interest income of about 800,000 rupees (about 10,000 U.S. dollars) annually organized workshops, training sessions and other facilities. “The pace was slow since we didn’t have a lot of money for projects.”

Enter Stange and Bandaranaike’s life changes overnight. “We started small, organizing a few workshops until Wolf suggested ‘why don’t we do a production?’ ”

The group selected six soldiers, disabled by the war, and some from rehabilitation institutes and other places across the island before finalising a 45-member cast. The cast — among whom were people with down-syndrome, sans limbs, and being deaf — underwent a one-month residential training programme at a training institute out of Colombo where Stange and his team taught them the fine art of acting.

The play ‘Butterflies can always Fly’, staged at a Colombo theatre was a success. It was then staged in several provincial capitals under trying conditions. In the city of Anuradhapura, some members of the cast ran to the nearby hospital and borrowed screens that separate the beds to serve as impromptu curtains.

Bandaranaike also formed an organization called the Sunera Foundation aimed at bringing together disabled players with players from underprivileged backgrounds and those without disabilities. “We want the disabled to integrate with others in society,” she said.

The second play ‘Flowers will always Bloom’ was also on similar lines of the first – the theme of war and its destructive element. While the first play had a mix of disabled people and others playing leade roles, this was about the refugee crisis with refugees playing real-life roles.

There are more than 500,000 people living in refugee camps or in the homes or friends after being displaced by the ethnic conflict. More than 60,000 people have died in the 18-year conflict sparked by demands for an independent homeland by Tamil rebels.

The play actors were picked from a refugee camp in the eastern town of Tirrukovil where Stange conducted a one-week workshop in the camp itself. Fifteen members of the cast for this play came from the Tirrukovil refugee camp like S. Thangeswary, a minority Tamil women whose past few months have been tinged with sadness.

Her father died in a bomb blast some years ago while her nephew was among Tamil prisoners massacred by a mob of majority Sinhalese villagers at a state rehabilitation facility near the hill station of Nuwara Eliya late last year. Thangeswary’s sister (the youth’s mother) who works in the Middle East is still unaware that her son is dead.

But Thangeswary, at a recent workshop, was immersed in acting and singing, with no signs of rancour or ill will towards her Sinhalese brethren. “I am happier here than back home,” she says.

“I know sign language,” said a Lakshman Karunaratne, beaming from ear to ear, from his wheelchair. He had left behind his job of painting homes and polishing furniture to take part in the workshop.

“Disabled people are hidden in their homes. I know because I go looking for work for them. This will help me to tell their parents that there is a life out there for them,” said Karunaratne who learnt sign language on his own.

They were all participants of a 10-day workshop organized by the foundation and funded by the British government, on voice training and dancing, drama, painting, puppetry and music with trainers being flown in from Britain.

The British Council is providing 50,000 sterling pounds to the Sunera Foundation in a two-year project to train the trainers in the arts field.

Bandaranaike says disabled people have for too long been marginalized by society and need a helping hand.

Working with disabled people has also changed her outlook in life. “When I see what disabled people can do it makes me humble. It removes whatever arrogance or cockiness one has (at our level of society). You see their potential and realize how much you have, compared to what they have. It brings you down by a few pegs and makes you more humane, more tolerant.”

“I know I get a lot of private sector funding for my work because of my influential position. That would end once my sister goes out of office. But we are broadbasing the organization and hoping someone else one day would take over my work as a facilitator,” Bandaranaike said.