absence 

“When I came here (to the place of displacement) ….” 

Absence is a theatrical experiment with installation that confronts the voice of the woman, opening up the space for an audience to walk through the many strands of the story that is the experience of being displaced. The audience path or trajectory created through the form of the installation using live art allows for an audience to engage with the work as ‘walker’ rather than as ‘watcher’.

The performance marks a return to the voice of a storyteller and the different perceptions of history and memory as is framed in collective and individual narratives and invested in the body; the focus being resilience in the contexts of experiencing violence and freedom. It also asks questions about the performer’s practice, about fear and frustrations, about different truths and how we choose to tell them.

The performance was conceptualised by Ruhanie Perera, and was created in collaboration with Jake Oorloff, Tracy Jayasinghe and Iromi Perera. Absence was presented at Colomboscope 2013 on the 24th of March 2013 at the Park Street Mews Brick Studio on invitation by the Goethe-Institut .

Continue Reading

Unearthed is a site-specific theatre and dance journey through a private home created by Ruhanie Perera and Sally E. Dean.

With ‘Unearthed’, the makers of the piece invited an audience on a journey through scenes of minimalist and absurdist nature, performed using text, movement, sound and costume.

One of the creative stimuli for ‘Unearthed’ was the writing of the American writer Adrienne Rich, who died in Spring 2012, in particular her ‘Twenty One Love Poems’ and her essay ‘On Lies, Secrets and Silence.’ The writing inspired the makers in their process to explore the idea of creating a theatrical poem on stage. The other significant exploration for the makers was the creation of the site-specific work. This adventure lead the makers on journey of not just engaging with the architecture and spatial dimensions of the site of a home, but also its history, its present and its spirit.

The performance of Unearthed was thus – in many ways – about journeys: journeys into and through inner and outer worlds of lies, secrets and silence, journeys through stories told through text and movement, journeys from the public into the private and journeys through spaces and sites.

Unearthed was first performed on December 1 and 2, 2012 in Kotte, Colombo, Sri Lanka. A rerun of Unearthed was held on the 16th and 17th of February, 2013 at the same location.

Continue Reading

It is one thing for a woman to tell her own story; it is quite another when it is told for her. While one cannot assume that the first narration is necessarily more ‘true’ than the other, the exploitative potential of another’s story of her life cannot be ruled out. It all depends on how the story is told, and to whom it is being shared in the first place and why. – Rustom Bharucha, 2011

‘absence’ deals with questions about the performer’s praxis, about frustrations, about different truths and how we choose to tell them, about fear. It focuses on playing emotion, and is rooted in a theatre practice of working with different techniques of and approaches to playing emotion/ generating emotional states or nuances. It also draws on a discussion of archiving emotions, and thus interrogates, within a performance practice, an “archive of feelings.” (Cvetkovich, 2003)

‘absence’ references the playing of Lakshmi in the performance My Other History and a corresponding interview conducted as actor’s research. The concept and dramaturgy for the piece was by Ruhanie Perera, and was created in collaboration with Sally Dean and Jake Oorloff. The referenced interview was conducted with N. Surenthiraraj in March 2011.

‘absence’ was presented at the Colombo Dance Platform 2012 – ‘Archive Fever: Dancing with the Archive’ on Friday, Nov 9, 2012 at 7.30pm at the Punchi Theatre, Borella.

Continue Reading

Floating Space in collaboration with the Peacebuilding and Development Institute, Sri Lanka (PDI-SL) was awarded a grant under the 2012 Youth Empowerment Grants Program facilitated by the American Centre and the U.S. Embassy, Colombo. The project was a collaborative performance and workshop project evolving out of its most recent production My Other History.

The My Other History – Performance and Personal Storytelling Workshop Project was carried out in Jaffna and Kandy in October 2012. The project focused on youth empowerment through reflection using performance as a discursive space for post-war realities and was carried out as follows:

1.     A performance of My Other History for general audiences and student audiences followed by a post-show discussion with the audience.

2.     A one-day (6-hr) personal storytelling workshop for youth (ages 15-24) following the two performances. (The workshop in Kandy will be held in December 2012)

Continue Reading

Set in a time of Sri Lanka’s move toward political reconciliation, My Other History explores the idea of reconciliation as a moment of remembrance, a process of letting go, an act of listening as much as that of confrontation.

While emphasis is placed on a reconciliation that is political and collective and pivots sometimes on a notion of moving forward that does not acknowledge its past, this is the story of the personal. My Other History is set in the present, while referring to a past that plays out through the memory of a young man and his conversation with his mother who tries to connect her son to his past, and to what is her history. It hints at the history of a people denied of land, memory and life; it touches on a family’s sense of belonging in the context of their experience of displacement and their understandings of being patriotic or even their ability to love their country.

Continue Reading

For the second stage of the Gaza Mono-Logues project, one cast member from the Colombo production, Tasmin Anthonisz of Ladies College joined an international cast which performed The Gaza Mono-Logues in New York at the General Assembly of the United Nations for its annual meeting on The Question of Palestine. At the UN, the 22 young international participants performed in 12 languages at noon at the Conference Hall, for an audience of ambassadors, country representatives and NGO representatives, who gathered on November 29, 2010 to debate the inalienable rights of the Palestinian People. Various media channels covered the event. Another performance of The Gaza Mono-Logues took place that evening at the Lobby of the United Nations, during the inauguration of the photo exhibition of UNRWA Summer Camp in Gaza.

On invitation by the The Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust, we reproduced the Gaza Monologues as the 67th birth commemoration performance of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam. The new cast of young actors were amateur performers between the ages of 11 and 22. Continue Reading

Letters evolved from the curiosity to work with the moving body to tell a story. The work brings bodies into a space: bodies that flirt with contact, separation, stillness, speed, silence, levels, even violence, while trying to express something of the vulnerability of reaching out.

How do you dance a series of thoughts? What image, energy, phrasing of movement can convey the story of life – or love as a series of openings and endings? Letters, drawing on the poetry of Sam Shepard, binds four people as they sometimes immerse, sometimes move through the tensions of the moment of being together.

Directed by Ruhanie Perera and performed by Venuri Perera, Jake Oorloff, Pasan Ranaweera and Tracy Jayasinghe, Letters was performed in December 2010 at the Colombo Dance Platform initiated by the Goethe Institute, the German Cultural Centre in Colombo.

The Gaza Mono-Logues are as much stories of childhood, as they are of war. They are told by children who dream of a tomorrow – while hoping they get through their today. And while they may be located in the specific context of Gaza, they speak of a collective psyche of a generation born into, growing up in and altered by experiences of war.

Floating Space Theatre Company partners with the Ashtar Theatre Company based in Palestine on The Gaza Mono-Logues performance project – Ashtar’s global initiative for peace and non-violence. Continue Reading

Sifting Point was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the launch of the Asia-Pacific Human Development Report – ‘Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific.’

Presented at the Goethe-Institut, Colombo in March 2010, Sifting Point was written by Jake Oorloff and directed by Ruhanie Perera. The cast comprised Ruhanie Perera, Pasan Ranaweera and Kumari Kumaragamage.

Set within a garden party where there is much anticipation caused by the proposed announcement of a promotion to be made by Director of a Language Institute, ‘The War Reporter’ pivots around the entrance of a young woman who relentlessly penetrates this bubble of the elite and the genteel with their own special flavor of petty backbiting, polite chatter and finger food, with reports of war. Amidst conversations of vacations and vacancies, flirtations and frivolity, the overpowering discourses on language as expression, culture and treasure unfurl. As the Institute’s need to protect ‘the language’ it is responsible for grows in pitch, the group becomes almost oblivious to the war reporter who interrupts with her reality of a life completely altered by war. I have seen people dead, says the war reporter, in an attempt to convince. And yet, the people dead, the numbers of lives she experiences and tries to report on to those who will not listen fails to penetrate the alcohol-tinged chatter and the narrow mind frames of a group of people so tightly-knotted by their individual circumstances. The play thus revolves around the collision of these two worlds.

The War Reporter was presented at the Goethe-Institut, Colombo in March 2010. The performance was directed by Jake Oorloff and Ruhanie Perera, produced by Izhara Huzair Zubair and presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, the German Cultural Centre in Colombo. The cast comprised Tehani Chitty, Ashini Fernando, Venuri Perera, Imani Perera, Minari Fernando, Lilanka Botejue, Chinthaka Fernando, Niren Neydorff, Gehan Blok and Christopher Stephen.

Continue Reading

A Bedtime Story, written and directed by Jake Oorloff was performed in June 2008 at the Punchi Theatre, Colombo. The cast comprised Ruhanie Perera, Mario de Soyza, Ruvin de Silva and Ashini Fernando.

Review of ‘A Bedtime Story’

• This bedtime story will wake you up by Steve Fernando, Sunday Times

Directed by Jake Oorloff and produced by Ruhanie Perera, in a shadow – an evening of performance poetry was performed at St. Andrew’s Scot’s Kirk, Colombo in November 2007.

The performers included Tamara Holsinger, Anushka Pereira, Izhara Huzair Zubair, Marisa de Silva, Asoka de Zoysa, Sashi Mendis de Costa, Dilsiri Welikala, Arvinda Salwatura, Rukshani Weerasooriya, Ruhanie Perera and Jake Oorloff