Stages Theatre Group

Going to India with this bunch was so fantastic. Travelling about in India is often considered quite a hard trip to begin with. Getting there was hard enough. We had to organise how the 12 of us would get there, but nothing quite as simple as ‘12 round trip tickets to Delhi and back please.’ I was naive enough to agree to coordinate the travel logistics for the group (Ruwanthie’s subtle strong arming tactics– she’s mastered the art of tyranny, you don’t even know it, but you end up doing exactly what she wants, but she appears so reasonable about the whole thing that you just can’t say no, and I’m also bit a of a pushover…)   

Let’s see if I remember.  Adam and Thushan needed to get back to Colombo early, Nimmi needed to hang about in Bombay and meet fancy film stars and be all chic after everybody else came back home, and Shakthi and I had to come back to work in the middle of the trip. Ayesha meanwhile had to come back from Thailand and get to Banaglore in time for the second theatre festival. So yes, that was lots of fun. Scary thing is I still get calls from Sri Lankan airlines asking if Mr. Mohammed Adamaly is flying to Delhi in October and I feel like I’m stuck in some time warp… Leaving Colombo was quite uneventful except that Ryan left behind the chocolate brownies he brought for us and we were all quite sad about that.  I had torn a ligament (while leaping off a 2-foot stool in the middle of rehearsal a few days prior to our departure), so once we got to Delhi, they got me a wheelchair.  That was both fun and bizarre.  There was also a very pretty Sri Lankan airlines’ pilot who stopped by to say hi to us… but wait, I digress. 

Touring four cities over two weeks alongside a whole bunch of theatrical South Asians [Indians, Bhutanis, Pakistanis (though that was quite short lived as they fought with the Indian organisers and ran away after the first two days), Bangladeshis and Nepalis] was actually a ton of fun.  And while it might sound like we are too up on ourselves, I think we can safely say that the Sri Lankan team was the most popular. 

In Delhi they sent a gigantic bus and our personal tour guide to come and pick us up.  That night Ru got some strange disease which stayed with her for the entire duration of the trip.  That was fun for her I’m sure.  Sin for her.First we boarded the flight to Lucknow and there was some engine failure. We stayed grounded on the flight longer than the actually flight time. Then we landed in Lucknow and met this lovely maternal figure who took care of us. Amal also lost his bag. That would have been fine really because between us we could have found a few clothes for him, but his bag had all our costumes.  They eventually found it and brought it to us, which was superb. 

We were hosted in Lucknow by an all-girls’ missionary school, so the boys in the group had to stay separately in some seedy joint. It was quite sad to let them go home at the end of each night actually but unlike the Pakistanis, (meow), we didn’t break the curfew. 

They LOVED our play.  Sorry, let me rephrase that–they LOVED Ryan–who they insisted on calling Bryan.  During the forum theatre part, they insisted on playing out scenarios which involved ‘Bryan’ and at one stage, I thought the oestrogen-progestrone levels in that theatre were going to go through the roof.  Ryan hated the adoration of course and fought it valiantly—anyone who knows Ryan would not need to be told this… 

Meanwhile we had begun bonding with the others (all except the Pakistanis who were in tacit competition with us because they thought they were the best and everybody else thought we were the best etc. etc.)…  Ru and Gihan had previously worked with one of the Bangladeshis called Rahul during a threatre workshop in Japan. He managed to rope Gihan to assist their group in an inspired performance piece to enhance their installation (and then Gihan guilted Adam into it). That my dears, is a story unto itself. I wish I was telling it but Adam is. He might try and hide some of the juicier bits, but we’ll get the truth out somehow… 

We then all sang our respective national anthems.  Gihan refused, trying to exercise some individuality but quickly decided against it when Ruwanthi told him to cooperate. Am I allowed to talk about the plastic pepsi/coke bottles filled with arrack-and-coke mixtures which kept us entertained inside the theatre?  It was cold in
Lucknow in December. The Lucknow girls were really so sweet and hospitable. Everybody there was. Including the head chef who was quite charismatic…  

From Lucknow the entire theater festival group (of about 50 I guess?) boarded another gigantic bus and we rode for hours and hours to Varanasi. We had a puncture on the road but other than that it was quite uneventful.  WE got some great shots of Nimmi and Ruhanie sleeping on the bus and we all had to beg Amal to share his i-pod. Just the night before the BJP head for UP had been assassinated so there was a general curfew imposed in Varansai.  That really made things tons of fun of course.  It also didn’t help that the Pakistani team (who decided to opt out of the festival) had leaked stuff to the papers and once we got to Varanasi, there was some general unrest based on that etc.  DRAMA. 

The entire team stayed together in the BHU guest house in Varanasi where we had a big pyjama party in the Bengalis’ suite where Gihan showed off some Michael Jackson moves. Throughout the Indian tour and even after we came back to
Colombo, Nimmi insisted on speaking in her strange Singlish-code language which we soon learned as well.  I could explain, but it wouldn’t be so funny on paper.  Nimmie and Ryan also left the rest of us and went off with Monisha, one of the organisers, to get a dharshan of the Vishvanath Mandir (bcs she’s a devout Hindu and had to abandon the rest of us)…  So, not to be petty or anything, but the rest of us abandoned them and went for a boat ride along the
Ganga… 

Benares (Varanasi) is such a magical place though and because there was curfew and restricted movement etc. we really didn’t get to absorb it to the extent that we should have…  The highlight for me was that we had this head-rush of performing and then immediately afterwards being crammed into two vans with all our bags and being rushed off to the train station, only to realise that the train was delayed.  Add to that the fact that I started too early with the choreographed movement and kept doing something completely different from the rest of them during our performance of ’24-hr Store’…  I kept hearing Ruhani’s voice saying ‘don’t worry about it, keep going’ and since I was in the very front of the line and couldn’t see that I was messing up, I kept thinking, ‘don’t worry about what?”   

The 22-hour train ride from Varansi to Bhubaneshwar (they REALLY should have flown us, but we had fun so we won’t complain) was really where all the groups bonded.  I mean all the four Adam, Gihan, Ryan and
Nimmi were our official ambassadors. Amal turned into a baila-monger… sang “ikkini-mikkini-ingi-thala-thala” pretty much solo with a lot of hooting and support from the rest of the compartment. Ryan gave up his berth to one of the train assistants and slept on mine.   

Bhubaneshwar was tons of fun but now I’m too tired to go on.  Except we had a cow who died after being hit by a van…  Sin.  And we met this really cool old man. And there was the BEST coffee joint right outside our guest house. And Thushan really worked magic with the available lights…