I had the opportunity to watch "My Sweet Rotten Heritance" a play by Anasuya Subasinghe rooted in the folk theatre tradition Kōlam from Sri Lanka at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav 2019. This is a personal account based on what spoke to me. Before we were seated in the theatre, there was a conch played when the door opened.. once the play began there was incense lit by an actor at several corners of the stage and also the audience area... there was a beautiful vocal rendition of the Buddhist shlok "Buddham Sharanam Gacchhami ... ". I had never heard it before in a voice such as this. These rituals to me were fascinating having mostly been exposed to theatre in the west for the better part of last two decades. To be fair, within that context as well rehearsal and performance spaces are considered to be sacred. However, if I can say, in the eastern theatre practice it seems the sacred is clearly accented with rituals. I felt overwhelmed in a very positive manner while witnessing this. I can care less if this seems 'religious' to some, it was fucking beautiful and special. And of course before the play began a woman from the front few seats yelled at two people who were loudly yapping away "Arey aap chup ho jayiye!!". Her audacity made me especially happy I am not sure why, but it did so I went with that. An aspect of the show that was intriguing was the way politics and social messaging was weaved into the stories. An excellent job done by Subasinghe to have mythic creatures in masks discuss and navigate their ways through situations that question the turmoil within constructs such as capitalism, displacement, genocide, poverty, patriarchy etc. She gave the actors freedom to walk right into the audience and interact. There were many comedic moments, the most touching stories to me was the one with the mask of a grandmother... where the actor walks in as a grandmother (played by a man in a saree) with child puppets all over her. She is taking care of children who she says are hers when they are her grandkids or neighbor's kids whose parents are either abroad making money or getting higher education or are busy working, there are real world issues that very quickly jump out of the mythic world and suddenly resonate with everyone. The energy of the musicians has to be applauded, especially the drummer who happened to be the eight generation of instrumentalist. I believe this performance was absolutely a treat. We were the second audience for this piece that began as a PHD thesis in Australia and is yet to be performed in Sri Lanka where I know it will be received with much enthusiasm. As for me ... I better dive deeper into this festival.
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