On the 1st of April the third installment of V Day was performed at Barefoot Café at 7.30 pm. Done by The Grassrooted Trust, this year the title was ‘The Elephant in the Room’ aptly underlining the issue at hand – violence against women that is so prevalent that it is considered ordinary. The scripts, written by Paba Deshapriya, Nilukshi Samdeen, Hans Billimoria, are fuelled by real women and their experiences. Directed by Jith Pieris & Hans Billimoria, the event consisted of 10 skits in Sinhalese, Tamil and English.

Each skit was staged around the whole of the cafe – here we had a woman sitting in the audience, there we had actors on a balcony, and at the back we had a couple of characters at the bar. Each performance was projected via a live camera onto a screen at the front, and this enabled them to have live subtitles as well so that no one would miss the poignancy of the Sinhalese and Tamil skits.

The plays attacked issues that most of us would rather stayed in the shadows – issues such as sex workers, transgender, bisexuals and homosexuals, that in the city are almost always accompanied with the cry of ‘but does that happen in Sri Lanka’? V Day answered with a resounding yes, and posed a question, what are you going to do about it?

The skits were cleverly written and well-acted, ‘You Crane I Crane We All Crane’ being one that stood out. Funny, poignant and theatrical, Ashini and her two demons played their parts with drama.

‘Life’s Habit’ and ‘Ring My Bell’ were stunningly performed by Janaha and Nilukshi, by turns snarky, bitter, dejected and desperate.

Raj and Hans in ‘Casino Kassilla’ and Anuruddha, Dominic, Dino and Ryan in ‘Stags Don’t Howl At The Moon’ were funny and emphasised the way in which women are viewed – objects of pleasure alone.

‘He is coming. Are you ready?’ was a raw segment by Gehan and Pasan, highlighting the shame that gays and bisexuals are made to feel.

‘No Fuss No Mess No Dress’ was interesting, but a little trite.

Salome was sultry and performed ‘Natural Woman’ well.

The very best was ‘Love Overflows’ in which Kapila gave a performance that would have been very easy to overdo, and did justice to the nuanced script.

Overall, V Day was superbly executed. Though the setting and audience meant that they were in some ways, preaching to the choir, there are plans to take these ideas out into other areas of the country. 

Comments

Shanuki: It was really good, we are entertained yes, but they (actors and scripts) were also so deep. It would be great if we can put these out to the rest of the country.

Dr. Dulcie Serasinghe: Fantastic. The boy on the balcony was the best, you really saw the people he was talking about. The first performance was also very good, she set the bar for everyone that followed.

Hunter: It was really good, a really good experience. I think it started out really strong.

Dinuki: It was great actually, it spoke about things that we aren’t generally aware of.

Reviewed by Marissa van Eyck
Pictures by Waruna Wanniarachchi