Janakaraliya as a Potential Existence: A Phenomenological Study of Janakaraliya

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Janakaraliya as a Potential Existence: A Phenomenological Study of Janakaraliya Introduction Today, the use of the performing arts as an educational tool takes place in different subject areas. Applied theatre art is widely used for this purpose. That is to say, today it provides an aesthetic critique to various communities on issues related to various fields such as reconciliation, peace, ethics, health, etc. But the question is whether theatreness,1 an element that is so closely intertwined in theatre, is considered decisive in those situations. The expressive power of the theatre between the theatre and the audience rests on this unique connection called theatreness. Therefore, it is possible to test the potentiality of the theatre. As we will explain further, theatreness is the exposure to the existentiality of the theatre, which is built on the unique relationship between the theatre and the audience. In other words, we are confronted with the existence of the theatre based on the unique relationship that develops between the theatre and the audience. What is being examined here is the importance of the theatre for the inherent purposes of the applied theatre and hence how the existentiality potential of the theatre - education - is represented in the Janakaraliya2 theatre. It seeks to characterization the inevitable connection between the theatre and education, as well as to make the experimental intervention necessary for the rethinking of applied theatre. For this Janakaraliya, one of Sri Lanka's leading theatre troupes in the field of applied theatre, uses experiences of their tours with their mobile platform - interviews and recorded scenes - and observations made on those tours. To analyze those observations and information, I used here the interpretation which I have developed through the Heideggerian phenomenology of theatreness and education.

Approach Street theatre, pioneered by Gamini Haththotuwegama in the 1970s and 80s, can be mentioned to be one of the main accomplishments of applied theatre art in the country. (Dharmasiri, 2014, p. 46) In an interview with Parakrama Niriella, he pointed out that there are significant limitations to the theatreness of those street plays that we are talking about here.3 That is to say, he pointed out the chaotic, disorganized nature of that street plays, the fact that the vocals were not sung in a dramatic and accurate scale, and that essential aesthetic appearances did not become a necessity for him. It is clear that an in-depth reading of such alternative practices, which stand out as a theatrical practice, is essential if they are to be organized in a way that can influence society. If so, my attempt here is to point out this quality of the performing arts, that is, theatreness, the essentiality of using it for education and on the other hand it points out the value of caring about theatreness to go towards the inherent goals of applied theatre.

1

Theatreness/ Theatricality. See: Dalia, F., 2016, Theatricality and Contemporary Performance. In: South Valley University International Conference on Plastic Arts and Community Service – II. Qena, South Valley University/ Lavender, A., 2001, Hamlet in Pieces, Nick hern books, London/ Goh, C., 2014, Aesthetic(s) Moves, International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Singapore.) 2 Janakaraliya is a mobile theatre group in Sri Lanka that performs in a theater tent. Janakaraliya members are multiethnic representatives in Sri Lanka. Since 2004, they have been in operation. 3 Niriella, P. (September 19, 2019). Personal interviews.

Theatreness Let us now discuss its theatreness through the experience of Janakaraliya. Before that, to explain theatreness in the applied performing arts space, if we focus on Parakrama Niriella's memory of Habib Tanveer's play of Charandas Chor, which he watched in India in 1976 - Consider the preface to the work of Charandas saha Charandas Hora, which he translated and adapted into a Sinhelese play. There was no screen on the stage. The voices of the performers displaced to the thousands of people who had gathered. It was backed by a round speaker about a foot in diameter that played the role of a microphone hanging from the roof of the stage. It was the first time in my life that I saw such unconventional use of technology. The play was illuminated by six 500-volt light bulbs. It was a beautiful play combining all of the elements of dance, singing, and music, and energetic acting. (Niriella, 2008, p. 9) This is a theatre built in a location with very limited facilities compared to the ‘middle-class’ proscenium theatre, and it is this experience that provides the primary inspiration for Parakrama Niriella's Janakaraliya. Let us now explain how the need for such a background is important in the applied theatre to explain theatreness. In other words, we focus on how the potential of the theatre can be turned into a possibility by recognizing the ontological connection between the audience and the theatre at the moment. We make a connection with anything in the practical connection that is made between that thing and me. Now suppose I present this article to you at the moment as a research paper, in a symposium: If so, then I'm connected to the microphone, the pen, the projector, all of these things that I use because of the instrumental connection I make with those things or in the way I use them. That is, what matters to us is not how they actually exist, but how they relate to us meaningfully. Imagine for a moment at some point that performance becomes weak. That is if this microphone is completely inactive at the moment; as it is the closest tool to my existence at the moment, it will take my relationship with it to a whole different level. That leaves us with a huge gap in the entire hall at once. In other words, my process completely breaks down when I lose the instrumental quality4 of the tool that has helped me so far. That is, the network of meaningful connections organized by the microphone itself breaks down. To put it more simply, "I'm here, there's a microphone, you're listening, there are loudspeakers, my voice is louder than all the voices here," Imagine a moment when all of this breaks down at once. Even though the microphone has done such a complete intervention before, we only take it forward and test it when it is inactive. Through that examination, I am reminded of the connection that existed between this microphone and me a moment ago and I'm going into a crisis over what to do next, and I'm eager to get back on track. This process gives us a different understanding of what we have been doing so far. That is, once this microphone is turned off, the relationship between the audience and me in my behavior takes on a completely different level, and accordingly, you will encounter a different view of my existence, or of my existence, a different appearance. It happens, because the thing I am doing at the moment which is the basic role of my existence was blocked simultaneously. (Heidegger, 2013, pp. 24-28) This process we often encounter in the theatre. That is, maybe the moment an actor enters the stage at the time of the play, or the actor does something unthinkable, or at the same time, we hear an external sound, a song, a change of light or background, an unbelievable expression made by someone. Through these various changes, our connection with the theatre breaks down again and again and takes us to different grounds. It makes us want to rethink the situation we had before. It creates uncertainty about the future as 4

Instrumental quality is the instrumentality of the device in the way we define it. Here I interpret the microphone as a device that can make my voice heard to a group at a higher intensity.

well as hope and curiosity. Instead of a linearly identifiable time, the temporality sets the background needed to identify the storyline. That is to say, we can call this process the existentiality of the performing arts. Or theatreness can be called the moment we meet. If so, it is inevitable that applied theatre will be very well organized for this. Here, after modernization, European theatrical art is confined to a ‘middle-class’ proscenium house, and the audience does not expect applied theatre to be organized into conditions that create a hierarchy based on money. Here, attempting to exit the proscenium platform, when theatrical art is established in other alternative spaces, it sets the background for the extravagance of theatrical art to glorify the politics aimed at by applied theatre. That is, in street theatre, with flaws that Parakrama saw, we can experience such situations with limitations.5 Similarly, on many Forum Theatre platforms, a significant decrease in theatreness can be seen in this condition. If so, it is necessary to establish in the theatre a situation close to the theatre use of Habib Tanvir as we mentioned above. But when a play is performed in a Forum Theatre or other alternative space, it is difficult to make such a connection with the audience in that space. That is, theatreness we rarely experience there.

Theatreness and Janakaraliya Let us take a look at a statement made by Tamil dramatist K.Rathitharan at the end of the Janakaraliya Drama Festival in Jaffna. It was only today that I realized this was a heap of iron. The Janakaraliya stage is completely iron-bulk. There is no great comfort. But I watched the play for seven days without any difficulty.6 Janakaraliya has more experience than just sitting in a comfortable seat and watching a play. What is the comfort of watching a play? There is no approach to creating inequality that determines the seat based on the value of the tickets. There are no magic tricks that separate the theatre and the audience from the various technologies. In the final analysis, Janakaraliya has the potential to create radical equality. In a sense, it is this equality that seeks to achieve as “comfort” in the revolutionary politics of human history. Janakaraliya is a great example to prove that there is a great distance between watching drama and the comforts of ordinary life. In the same way, in order to preserve or glorify the theatre, which is an element of the performing arts, one has to take care of all these inseparable relationships existences. This suggests that theatrical performances in alternative spaces other than the proscenium stage alone cannot generate discernment in the public. That is to say, what we are trying to convince you of here is not that it is mandatory for applied performing arts to set up our theatre space in the same way as the theatre of Janakaraliya or Habib Tanveer. The important thing here is how to create a background that glorifies theatreness needed to enjoy a play. The background is not just theatrical space, but a collection of all kinds of relationships that the theatre carries. In the same way, in the Forum Theatre platform, the genuine presence of each audience and the operators is directly relevant to us. That is to say, for this theatreness, the script, the performance and other ancillary elements, the alternative location, etc., influence many things from history to the future. "The story of the play can be completely different depending on the place chosen 5

Read Somaratne Balasuriya's article wfma ùos kdgH mrK fldaÜ l,djla for further critiques of street drama of that era. Abeysuriya, P. (2016), Y%S ,xldfõ ùos kdgH l,dj' Colombo 08: Nirmala Publications. 6 Niriella, P. (September 19, 2019). Personal interviews.

by the applied theatre."7 This does not imply that the conditions of the proscenium platform are compulsory or necessary to establish such an alternative space. What matters here is how to protect theatreness in different spaces.

Theatre and Education A generalized idea of conversations about the performing arts is: ‘Anyone who enters the theatre must leave the theatre as a different person’. But the argument I am trying to build here is not such an abstract imperfect idea. We all have potential. In other words, man is a being with a potential ability (Heidegger, 2013, pp. 183-185). That is, you can achieve more in the future than you currently have. For example, one can direct another play, submit a research paper to another international conference, and you can achieve many such things in the future. In this way man has potential that may not have been real before, but that we may inherit in the future. For that we have to edit the past as we want. This can be understood in conjunction with the concepts of Temporality, Understanding, and Care as a central concept of Heideggerian philosophy. Education is the tool that exposes that potential. That is, the role of education is to give me the support I need to expose my potential, or to recognize and convince myself that my potential is something I have. If so, the performing arts have the potential to be a medium for that. In this particular context, what is important to us as potential abilities are not the professional status that can be achieved as an individual, but the ability to recognize existing oppressed political ideologies. In other words, the world in which we live and deal, the social order in the ultimate sense, is the conviction that something is not natural if it is not given to us and thereby recognizing within ourselves the potential to shape society for the better.

Janakaraliya and Education When visiting Sinhala areas, Sinhalese people prefer to watch Sinhala plays performed by Tamil people, when visiting Tamil areas, Tamil people prefer to watch Tamil plays performed by Sinhalese people.8 Janakaraliya performs almost every one of their creations - depending on the region - in both languages. It is another feature of Janakaraliya. According to Ajanthan, who commented above, it was the Janakaraliya Tamil members who won the love of the Sinhalese people living in the Padaviya and Medawachchiya border villages of Anuradhapura. Tamil members were able to experience the same from Sinhala audiences in Colombo, Hambantota, Tangalle, Monaragala and Chilaw. But areas like Padaviya are special because they are a war-torn community on a daily basis. 7

Nicholson, H. (2011). Theatre, education and performance: the map and the story. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.p. 199 An example of Helen Nicholson's idea can be seen in the audience response to the Venkatakki Vattam Play by Janakaraliya in Mullaitivu. Similar to Grusha in the story of the Caucasian Chalk Circle, a schoolgirl who lost her father in the war recalls how her mother, just like Grusha, took her and her younger brother from village to village during the war. During a visit to Jaffna, a discussion on Asadak's verdict was brought to the attention of the judges of the Jaffna courts. Also, just like when Grusha went to buy a glass of milk for Prince Michael, the people of the North remembered the shortage of goods and the prices of goods at that time. Janakaraliya. (2017). Venkatti Vattam. 8 Ajanthan,M. (September 19, 2019). Personal interviews.

What really happens here is that the imaginary other is replaced by the real other. In other words, Sinhalese and Tamils have an imaginary view of each other. During the war they had very limited space to deal with or work with these different nations. Sinhalese often identify Tamils as members of the LTTE9 or a pro-LTTE community. The Tamils identified the Sinhalese as Sinhala-speaking soldiers. Furthermore, both political projects were active in determining how the other should think of me and generalizing those ideas. Janakaraliya has experimented with the aesthetic dimension of blurring the idea of the other they create according to those means of communication. We can experience more success in using Janakaraliya than convincing this process with a genuine news service or any lecture series or other technical means. That is because of the peculiarities that exist in the use of the Janakaraliya performing arts we have mentioned above. Foremost among these is the theatreness we have demonstrated above. Finally, in Ajanthan's statement above, there is the reaction of real people that we meet after the ideology of the other has faded. A mother in Ampara told me that she had an overwhelming hatred for the Tamil people. "But now I fell in love with you, not only about you, but the whole of the Tamil people." Sumudu, who played the role of the King while in Jaffna, was warmly welcomed by the children. They gave him gifts and kissed him telling they loved him. They say that they did not recognize he was Sinhalese while on stage.10 The performances of this multi-ethnic and bilingual theatre group are an approach that can have a huge impact on the exclusion of Tamils and Sinhalese. It gives them the ability to think anew about Tamils as well as Sinhalese and to be able to co-exist with them, or to be convinced that they have that potential. If told more precisely, this can provide that education. If the uniqueness of theatreness is re-marked here; one could argue that such things are communicated only in the creation of Sinhala and Tamil members together. But what matters is how the performing arts, chosen as the setting for organizing that ethnic collaboration, project its deepest dimension, theatreness, to the audience. In other words, the unity of these ethnic groups should communicate more intensely and theatreness should be a fundamental feature of those creations in order to confront the grandeur of that unity. When we went to Jaffna in 2010, people would not take to the streets after 6 p. m. There was no curfew either. But people stop all work before dark. It was only after Janakaraliya went and performed that the people of Chemmani Road got used to normal life. They came to watch the play. There were also 9. 30 pm performances on some days. And another important thing is that former local dramatists also came to the fore in those areas. They started working again. They have been working since that day.11 When we think about the multiculturalism that exists in Janakaraliya, we can position it from another dimension. That is, it meets the spatial conditions required to maintain theatreness as mentioned above, the potential of the performing arts. In other words, Venkatti Vattam, a Tamil production of Janakaraliya's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, received a good response not only because of the creative potential of the production but also because the production was not limited to Janakaraliya members: actors and actresses selected by theatre groups and workshops in the North to participate in performances and other ancillary activities, to be a Tamil production of the The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht, selected actors and actresses from the North and their experiences - including some former LTTE cadres - instead of ideologies based on the Sinhala translation, the space was created to interpret this Tamil production from 9

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Logananthan, R. (September 19, 2019). Personal interviews. 11 Mallawarachchi, S. (September 19, 2019). Personal interviews. 10

other perspectives. That is, a dramatic representation of the polyphonic quality of the The Caucasian Chalk Circle, a theatrical production with such a composition was able to be performed in Jaffna, Colombo, Matara, Kilinochchi and Nuwara-Eliya, showing results as a more effective method of healing society after the war, for reasons such as providing a stimulus for theatre groups in Jaffna for their creative process. It is clear, that all of this-not just one of the priorities - needs to be acted upon in a meaningful way for theatreness to unleash the educational potential of the performing arts. As another feature of Janakaraliya, let’s take a look at the rarely discussed Curtain Call in a theatre play creation. In a sense, Janakaraliya's strength emerged in the fact that this is the end of the play. Janakaraliya members, who traditionally perform at the end of each performance, introduce their name and region where they came from.12 The magnitude of this introduction is not insignificant. They carry out a dramatic process aimed at "reconciliation". Eventually they confront us with its practical reality. It provides the potential for coexistence exists within the audience or theatre sponsorship to turn that potential into a possibility. The viewer does not need to make a big mental investment at this particular moment. It can be said that they develop a different kind of thinking and critique of the theatre they enjoy, of that historicity. Applied Theatre in this sense is not a doss house that chooses other alternatives due to the lack of funding to perform on the proscenium stage. For the applied theatre - its genuine purpose - it is vital to think of such perfections.

Conclusion Finally, theatreness can be mentioned as a necessary condition for exposing the potential of the theatre. It enables the performing arts to communicate the ideas that are projected to the audience through the theatre with greater intensity. Then, the viewer clearly can be experienced theatrically the ongoing ups and downs and the conflicts in the theatre as a whole. They also have the ability to balance Janakaraliya's composition, stage form and space with theatreness. In other words, the way in which theatre can exist as an alternative enables us to preserve the theatreness we lose and thereby to expose the potentiality of the audience to such an ability, to act more positively. If we think of Janakaraliya as an example, any theatre group organized for the performing arts should be meaningfully unique in presenting those alternatives. For that, it will be more important to think deeply about theatreness.

Bibliography Abeysuriya, P. (2016), Y%S ,xldfõ ùos kdgH l,dj' Colombo 08: Nirmala Publications. Dharmasiri, K. (2014). Mapping South Asia through Contemporary Theatre (1st ed.). A. Sengupta (Ed.). NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Heidegger, M. (2013). Being and Time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Malden: Blackwell. (1927) Nicholson, H. (2011). Theatre, education and performance: the map and the story. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sumanasekera, V. (2017), ud¾áka ffyv.¾f.a meje;au iy ld,h lD;sfha m%;sk¾ s udKhla" Unpublished Notes. Tanvir, H. (2008). prkaodia iy prkaodia fydrd (P. Niriella, translator.). Rajagiriya: Janakaraliya Publications. 12

Watch this video on Janakaraliya website: Video. (2016, January 21). Retrieved from http://www.janakaraliya. org/video.html