Makeshift Theatre Travel Blog
Makeshift Theatre visited Sri Lanka in September 2010 to offer an introductory Playback Theatre workshop in the town of Hatton, while only meriting a passing mention in the Rough Guide to Sri Lanka, Hatton hosts the Centre for Social Concern and is the capital of the tea-growing area. The Director of the Centre for Social Concern is Father Benny, a dynamic Tamil Jesuit Priest who grew up on a tea plantation is very familiar with local social problems and issues. The work of the Centre for Social Concern is not confined to working with any particular religious group, but seeks to empower all of the people that live and work on tea plantations and the urban poor in the Nuwara Eliya district of the Central highlands. I was put in touch with Father Benny by Cymbeline Buhler, a Playback Theatre Practitioner form Australia who was instrumental in establishing a Playback Theatre presence in Sri Lanka some years earlier.
I was pleased to spend ten days staying at the Centre and taking part in the daily life, meeting many local people and taking a turn to cook in the evening. I was taken good care of by Maryausa, Emilmoses, Chandrakathan and Rebina among others and appreciated the friendly hospitality and administrative skills of Yogitha who organised the workshop. I also had the privilege of visiting two tea plantations with Father Benny and experiencing the Tamil Mass and meeting local people and learn something of the life of the tea picker.
The residential three-day workshop was attended by 32 young Tamil people, both male and female, ranging in age from 15 to 25, all of whom lived on tea plantations in the area and a couple of whom had previously attended a PT workshop with Cymbeline. Otherwise, everyone else was new to the idea, and it seemed, new to the idea of drama itself, so I had to adjust my plans and find a suitable approach. As it was my first time in Sri Lanka, I had some pre-conceived ideas about what kinds of stories this group might bring to the workshop and I soon had to revise them. I conducted the workshop in English, with Father Benny translating into Tamil. Working with a translator requires a slowing down of the process, pausing often to give the translator time to understand the content as well as translate appropriately. Working with a translator also means that the facilitator is one-step removed from contact with the group, dependent on the translator to keep the flow going and not get side-tracked into a debate or over-mediating between group and facilitator. It’s a challenging, sometimes frustrating and rewarding process. Continue reading