For Jehan Aloysius, Rag: the Musical is very much a personal thing. He has literally been in the shoes of his characters, faced what they must face, and lived the sometimes terrifying life of a first-year student in a local university. It’s writing from not just the heart, but from experience-for Rag is loosely based [...]

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The Sundaytimes Sri Lanka

Rag, an insider’s story

Jehan Aloysius, playwright and director of this orginal musical to hit the boards soon, tells Duvindi Illankoon why this venture is a kind of personal crusade for him
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For Jehan Aloysius, Rag: the Musical is very much a personal thing. He has literally been in the shoes of his characters, faced what they must face, and lived the sometimes terrifying life of a first-year student in a local university. It’s writing from not just the heart, but from experience-for Rag is loosely based around the experiences of a young Jehan and his batchmates during their university days.

Rag: Bringing out the university system’s own microcosm of society

The musical to be staged at the Lionel Wendt from October 19-23, revolves around Sri Lankan universities and the initiation that all freshmen students face at the hands of their seniors called ‘ragging’-deemed to be the ‘great equaliser’ of state universities; where students are admitted based on Advanced Level qualification and not money or social standing. “It certainly is a great equaliser,” comments the playwright. “In that everyone is equally terrified.

“Ragging is such an important issue in the context of Sri Lanka,” he adds. “People think that it’s just a game-an exaggerated form of bullying- but it is so much more. Universities are a microcosm of society; they’ve got their own rules, own police, internal politics…it’s very difficult to adjust to that as students. Did you know Sri Lanka practises some of the worst forms of ragging known to the world? There are children dying. There are students who come to universities to start a new life or provide for their families, but they drop out because they can’t face the humiliation and pain of ragging. Their lives go downhill from there.”

As an English Department student at the Colombo University 15 years ago, Jehan was caught smack in the middle of two university factions. His friend Avanti Perera created quite the stir walking into university on her first day in a bright neon mini-skirt. “Here comes trouble,” the lecturers would say, laughs Jehan. She refused to change her way of dress to conform to the demands of senior students. “She was incredibly brave during those uni years,” remembers Jehan. “Avanti would get ragged about five times a day.

I remember one time we walked out of a lecture hall and there was a bunch of guys who called her names and threatened to rip her dress off. She refused to give into it though, and I think those university years made so many girls transform into brave women.” Avanti, known fondly during her uni years as the kotata andina girl (the girl who dresses in short clothes), would go on to become his musical collaborator in Rag, she performs the music composed by Jehan. The female lead in Rag is loosely based on Avanti, just as many other characters have their real-life counterparts.

Those university years were some emotional ones for Jehan as a writer. Going into university in the same year that two ragging-related deaths had occurred, he was ‘very much nervous’, he admits. Entering university and having to face up to the system was something that compelled him to write the musical, which he began working on in 1997. It took two years to complete. The protagonist Joseph, played by Jehan himself, is a regular ‘Colombo boy’ with strong ideals and a major dream to change the system of initiation in academic institutions. He is forced to taste the bitter flavour of realism with his entrance into a local university, when he realises that his ideal of ending ragging with words and not violence is a futile one in a very savage system.

“There were these unwritten rules in university,” says Jehan. “The government bought in anti-ragging legislation to put some boundaries on how far the process could go, but that didn’t change much. In Rag we bring out both forms of ragging-the light-hearted, silly things that can actually bring people together along with the absolutely horrible ones that can scar you for life-sometimes enough to take your own life. We’re looking at it objectively.

Jehan: Writing from experience

There’s no point preaching, no matter how much you want to. Theatre is meant for thought-it’s up to the audience to think and interpret and choose for themselves.”

But are they playing to the correct audience? This is where forum theatre comes in, he explains. With Stagehands, they will travel to schools and engage with Advanced Level students through forum theatre, through which the writer hopes to convey his message to the next generation of university students.

For Jehan, there is nothing like theatre when it comes to conveying a strong message. “Theatre speaks to you like nothing else does. It makes you question, it makes you feel intensely…the connection between the actor and the audience is so much more.”
Filled with memorable melodies and meaningful lyrics, Rag handles its central theme with intelligence and sensitivity. For Jehan, the main man behind plays like Pyramus and Thisby, An Inspired Swan Lake and Nutcracker, this is almost half his lifetime’s work finally about to go on stage. For the amateur theatre troupe CentreStage Productions he formed in 2001, this will be their most ambitious project yet. Await our interview with the dynamic cast and crew behind the play next month!




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