Sulochana Dissanayake’s life and work have been about diminishing and enhancement. Of various kinds. As an undergraduate in the United States of America, in addition to dealing with all the issues of not being white in a predominantly white population of New England which made ‘identity’ a political concern, Sulochana encountered a direct form of diminesion by way of name-truncation.
‘In Sri Lanka we shorten names for affection. In the USA it’s a convenience, especially when people find it hard to pronounce “foreign” names. So I went from Sulochana to Sulo. One day, when I was doing the midnight shift while an intern at the Williamstown Theater Festival, helping support a massive 10 foot wall, someone asked, “you, what’s your name?” and I said “Sulo”. He said “Ok S, move it along!”’
She said that sometimes international students did the shortening themselves to spare themselves the tedious process. So Tamiur from Pakisatan became ’T’ while Qingan (pronounced ‘Chinlan’) would say ‘I am Qinglan but you can call me Q!’
Today, Sulochana, who is the founder and artistic director, ‘Power of Play Pvt Ltd,’ engages with different kinds of identity issues and different issues of dimension. Recently, for example, Power of Play, built the tallest female puppet ever in Sri Lanka. ‘The little girl giant of Sri Lanka’ as it is called is 14 feet tall.
“Little girls are not taught to become giants, they are in fact told that it’s ok to be ants and in fact it’s even virtuous to be that small; but the problem is that over the course of their lives they are expected to do giant-like things. They have to be employed, contribute to the household income, bear and take care of children, cook, clean, entertain and be excellent on all fronts, which of course is humanly impossible.
‘Even as they continue to be treated as ants; small, insignificant, close to invisible and inconsequential,’ one might add.
The interest in issue of identity and her fascination with theater began at an early age. The youngest of three children whose passions were enthusiastically supported by their parents, Sulochana had been too small to take part in drama workshops conducted at the National Museum by disciples of Somalatha Subasinghe. She had to sit on a table and watch her older siblings do their thing.
‘I was transfixed, though. I would repeat the whole thing with my father. He and I did skits while my brother and sister made up a critical gallery, usually flooding the performance with a deluge of insults that my poor mother tried in vain to censorLater I told myself that if I could have survived their criticism, I could survive any audience.’
It was natural that at St Bridget’s Convent she would get involved in the band, the choir and in theatre productions. She remembers that time vividly, but most importantly was conscious of the absences.
‘I always felt that theatre had more scope than Lionel Wendt and John De Silva, metaphorically speaking. School dramas were mostly musicals or Shakespeare. Of course Shakespeare is supposed to be timeless but the way we did it was to my mind outdated. It was only in inter-house competitions that original content was allowed. Unfortunately apart from Sinhabahu and Maname I wasn’t really exposed to Sinhala theatre as it wasn’t common practice to attend events such as the Rajya Natya Ulela (State Drama Festival). So when I was introduced to Ruwanthi De Chickera’s work it was a revelation. She was the one of the rare directors telling contemporary Sri Lankan stories in the English theatre scene. I felt this was what theatre ought to be, that it should be relevant to contemporary audiences.
‘I wasn’t too keen on going abroad to study after my ALs in 2005, but my parents told me that I could always come back. School had forced me to confront the realities of discriminatory structures and their rigidity. So I was rather frustrated and felt that it would be a good idea to study abroad. My father came up with a few liberal arts schools that were small enough to enable me to have one on one interaction with educators. That’s how I ended up at Bates College, Maine.
‘I wanted to study theatre but my brother suggested that I base myself in a more formal, mainstream discipline from a career perspective. Bates had a good economics program, so although I preferred to study business, I figured that since economics is about studying human behavior it is related to my fundamental interests. So in the end I did a double major, economics and theatre.’
Her undergraduate thesis allowed her to combine her love of stories and the rupees and cents that inevitably come into play. It was about an independent organization called “Friends of Prisoners’ Children (FPC)” which had been founded by Sulochana’s mother, Florine Marzook (the wife of the then Commissioner of Prisons, Rumi Marzook) and by Sr Immaculate, the former Principal of St Bridget’s who ran ‘Welcome House’ which is a haven for teenage mothers.
‘I analyzed how the annual cash grant of Rs 1000 a month, given at the time by FPC, affected school attendance and performance of the recipients. The money came from independent contributors and at that time they financed around 150 students. I believe the number now exceeds 400.’
Since she was also majoring in theatre, Sulochana had to come up with a final year production. She chose Sam Shepard’s ‘A lie of the mind’.
‘Sam, who passed away recently, was a premier American theatre writer and actor who wrote about modern realities, in particular the struggle of modern Americans. The play was set in rural American. The fact that so much of America was so rural really surprised me at the beginning as it was in stark contrast to what Hollywood portrayed. So upon arrival, Maine actually felt like Kekirawa to me. Anyway the play was about the isolation faced by white American families, white poverty and domestic violence, thing that we, as outsiders, rarely associate with America.
Apparently Bates would have two major productions a year and they were usually by faculty members, so a student-directed main stage production was unique.
‘I had always been interested in directing players, even as a freshman. I directed for the Robinson Players, a student theatre group. The faculty noticed that I was serious.’
Sulochana had, by her senior year, obtained a lot of hands-on experience in theatre productions. In her junior year she won a coveted internship at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, one of the top 10 regional theaters in the US which exposed her to the inner workings of professional theater in USA. In the summer of her sophomore year at Bates she was selected to intern at the Williamstown Theater Festival, which we mentioned earlier.
‘Interns were essentially workhorses. I got to see the dark side of theatre. It was hard, back-breaking work. It opened my eyes to how many people are needed to make things work. In Sri Lanka we grow up believing that it’s about acting and little else. In the USA, sometimes stage managers get paid more than the actors; stage managers essentially run shows sometimes even for 30 years! Every element of production had a professional behind it. It was a far more informed process. Everyone is focused on his or her role and the industry supports them all. In Sri Lanka we don’t have that. So we have amateur productions where actors and directors get better over time.
‘I was a woman, colored and I had an accent. At Williamstown, I got called only for one audition in two and a half months. So I asked myself whether I had come to move sets and pick up cigarette butts. I told myself, “no, I am going to be a director.” They had intern nights where interns could get together and do something creative. There were about 70 of us but only about 10 were getting regular acting roles.’
What was it going to be about? Sulochana had decided, ‘identity’.
‘Identity was an issue that I felt strongly about. Bates was predominantly white. My roommate would jokingly say that I am the poster child for Bates simply because I represented a minority. Now the campus is fairly mixed given the hard driven initiatives to recruit students of color, but a decade ago, someone like me was a rarity.
‘Identity is a lot of things but it could even be as simple as food preferences. So I asked the interns a simple question, ‘have you ever felt you were a part of a minority?’ The outpouring of personal stories was amazing. There was for example a boy, the whitest boy with the blondest hair and the bluest eyes, who talked about how difficult it was for his father to accept that he was gay. There was a Jewish woman who was allergic to bread. She said “I am a red-headed Jew who is allergic to bread!” So in reality no one ever really belongs 100% of the time. None of us.’
That was the genesis of 'Project: Identity' - Created and Directed by Sulochana Dissanayake and Philana Gnatowski in collaboration with the Apprentice Company of Willamstown Theater Festival '07 (MA, USA). It was a compilation of monologs with 2-4 player scenes. Philana was a brilliant writer - She and I sifted through the interviews we had gathered and wrote a short script.
‘One scene was about filling forms in a waiting room, essentially trying to fit into boxes. My monolog was a scene in an airport where accents and unfamiliar names forced people to slow things down, giving rise to comedy. It was also about how Sulochana came to be reduced to “S” - completely nullifying the original meaning of the name in my mother tongue. People said it had made a huge impact. In fact people started calling me Sulochana.’
The US economy had collapsed by the time she graduated from Bates in 2009. Jobs were hard to come by. Interviews were rare.
‘The process was also a revelation. I was called for interviews but got very few call-backs because I mentioned economics with theatre. My theatre advisor, a Hungarian lady caleld Kati Vecesy said, ‘you idiot, take theatre out; pretend you didn’t do it!’ The number of calls thereafter amazed me.’
However, nothing interesting had come up. Then Christine McDowell, a theatre professor at Bates who was the designer for the theatre department, had told her about the Watson Fellowship offered by the Watson Foundation funded by IBM Corporation. It was open to students from 40 small liberal arts colleges and allowed recipients to follow a lifelong passion in countries they had never been to.
‘Writing the grant application gave me clarity about who I am and what I wanted. I wanted to start my own theatre company in Sri Lanka. I wanted to use theatre for reconciliation, for communication and to share stories and perspectives. I wanted theatre to be something that helps us understand where we are coming from.
‘The US was the pinnacle in terms of training. Sri Lanka, on the other hand lacks the infrastructure. I wanted to learn how countries such as ours use art as communication. Chris had been involved in a Shakespeare project in South Africa which faced issues similar to ours. The Watson Fellows had to go to at least two countries. Some went to as many as 10, but I wanted to have a more immersive experience.
Sulochana spent six months in Grahamstown and Cape Town, South Africa, and was exposed to modern puppetry and masks. This was where, in a conversation with Janet Buckland (Founder of UBOM Theatre Company, based out of Rhodes University in Grahamstown) she realized that the secret of successful theatre is for the audience to identify with the actors. Grahamstown also hosted the 2nd largest arts festival in the world - 2nd only to Edinburgh Festival and this was where she had come across giant puppets by Les Grandes Personnes: ‘it was like being in Alice in Wonderland’.
In Capetown she worked with FTHK, a young and independent theatre company that had a simple message: listen with your eyes. It was non-verbal, visual theatre which integrated deaf and hearing artists, audiences and educators.
‘It was like walking into a different universe. Everything was in sign language. All production was non-verbal. in the USA we were told voice and eyes are the most important connecting points for an actor. Here people were in full masks and didn’t have eyes & they didn’t speak. It was like watching a picture book come to life. There was no language, so it could be any nationality, any age. This was how I felt that we could do so much with non-verbal performances back in SriLanka to bridge the gap created by language and ethnicity.
‘It was Prof Gina Fatone who decided the second country for me. She was an ethnomusicologist who had done fieldwork in Indonesia. One day she brought a 3D rod puppet to class. She made it breathe! I was hooked. I felt that if that little thing could engage someone like me, then this is what I should do.
‘So I also went to Indonesia where I learned about Wayang (puppets ). Kulit or shadow puppets was the original that arrived from India and it was an elite form of court entertainment. It gained so much popularity that people wanted to watch Wayang during the day time too - which gave birth to Wayang Golek - the 3D wooden rod Puppet form, which is a a folk form which was not too stylized. The stories could be about Rama and Sita but they could include localized characters to mimic local politicians, clowns & commoners. Everyone had something to watch. It was all night long - very much like our bali thovil.’ Sulochana studied under the late wayang golek maestro Dhalang Asep Sunandar Sunarya and his puppet troupe Giri Harja III.
Sulochana brought all these experiences back to Sri Lanka. She began teaching drama and puppetry at the Moratuwa Centre of the Merrill J Fernando Charitable Foundation run by Dilmah. It is based in the old Velona Factory where the warehouses have been repurposed to house inclusive learning spaces to serve low income families including children with special needs.
‘I realized that puppetry was essentially dead in Sri Lanka because there was no economic incentive. I felt that we needed to create a demand for it. Around four years ago, while perusing YouTUbe for light weight giant puppet designs, I came into contact with Felix Norgren who had been trained by Les Grandes Personnes . After four years of trying to find funding to organize a giant puppet workshop in Sri Lanka (with no luck from the related embassies).
Felix finally saved enough money to come to Sri Lanka with his family for a holiday and offered us a workshop free of charge. I pitched the idea to Dilmah as an ideal opportunity for us to turn the center in to a base where we can create giant puppets which could be used commercially. Dilmah agreed to sponsor the space, labor and material for the workshop as the centre was already training young people in carpentry and with Felix’s help we managed to create a giant puppet in 3 weeks from January - February this year. Now we have come to a point where we can offer workshops to corporates on soft skill development, gender sensitizing and emotional intelligence via the medium of theater and Puppetry.
That was not going to be the beginning and end of Sulochana’s forays into puppetry. In fact, as far back as 2011, she got an opportunity to do a skit in Jaffna on the occasion of opening the American Corner (of the US Embassy), which was a non-verbal performance addressing post-war social realities which included teenage pregnancies and the how new technologies were tearing apart the social fabric.
‘We did two 10-minute performances using hand-made puppets and they were well received. We were invited to perform in Jaffna schools.
This year, she had won a small competitive grant from the British Council’s ‘Voice and Choices’ program, where recipients had to focus on developing voices and choices of women and girl children. Sulochana is in the process of creating a puppet show of a little girl who grows up with the do’s and don’ts of Sri Lankan society but is blessed with a grandmother who told her to follow her passions and be kind. In this way, fantastically - overnight, she becomes a giant, Sulochana explained.
Giants.
‘That’s what I want little girls to be. I want them to be the giants they can be. We are a post-war nation but for me the wars of the household have always been more interesting and in need of more urgent attention. We can’t talk about rape culture if we are not even teaching children about the rights to their own bodies. Do we give them choices? can they decide? And it’s true for boys as well.
‘I’m inspired by Seema Omar who is a puppet creator and also a creative counsellor. From her I’ve learnt that all art, puppetry, music, theatre etc., can heal people, can facilitate introspection, build empathy and resilience. It can help us reconnect with ourselves.’
So, in this way, she has used well-known stories such as Mahadenamutta but have transformed the golayas. Dhalang Asep’s son Bhatara Sena collaborated with Sulochana to create a set of Sri Lankan characters in the Wayang Golek form for the ‘Modern Stories of Mahadanamuththa’ - so she has Polbemoonee and Puwakbadillee - where the traditional male characters have been replaced by their female and male relatives/friends of multiple ethnicities to more accurately represent Sri Lankans of today. And ‘the characters are not talking about the eluva and the muttiya (goat and the earthenware pot) but about HIV and sexual bribery!’
Sulochana doesn’t have all the answers. Indeed she insists that sometimes we need to tell ourselves and one another that we don’t have the answers. What’s important is to engage in ways that make others engage with us, to bring puppets to life, and to have the tools and attitudes that allow us to be open, honest and become the giants we can be.
You can learn more about Sulochana's work @ www.powerofplay.lk and through powerinfoplay (facebook)
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