Strength in working together
Fully into it: A workshop in progress. Pix by Anuradha Bandara
As she looks around at a semicircle of curious parents, Jenny Sealey extends her arms in a warm welcome. “I’m so happy to see you today,” she says, noting that they are all helping change the world of people living with special needs by helping their own children. It is the last day of a five-day programme conducted by the Graeae Theatre Company from the UK to improve the skills of the trainers of the Sunera Foundation, and Jenny is conducting a session for parents.
She starts by asking everyone to come up with a sign name for themselves. It should be something which defines them, she says, demonstrating her sign name to them – arms held in front of her forming a semicircle with her hands held slightly apart. She explains that the reasoning behind her sign is that she is very forward and engaging and she felt that her sign demonstrated this. Soon everyone was making a sign name, indicating anything they found important about themselves from their strength or determination to even the length of their hair or the spectacles they wore. Looking at Jenny – one would see a statuesque, blonde woman with a smiling face who was open, cheerful and welcoming. To hear her speak would be the only indication of the fact that Jenny has been deaf from the time she was seven years old. An earlier session held that day for the students also focused on similar areas.
Graeae, pronounced “grey-eye”, is a company for the disabled which creates productions which dispel myths about the defencelessness of differently abled people. The story behind their name is an allusion to the Greek legend of the Graeae sisters. According to legend, the three Graeae sisters shared a single eye and tooth. They would see the world and eat sharing this one eye and tooth. The Graeae ethos is grounded in this principle of working together and sharing resources.
Sunera Foundation chairperson Sunethra Bandaranaike is also a big believer of the positive impact which sharing resources has. “At the start of the workshop, we gave the trainers a notebook and ask them to note down what they have learnt and we also asked them to discuss what they have learnt so that the entire team shares this knowledge. We are united, and this is why we have succeeded over the years,” she said.
It is clear that the Sunera Foundation does not need any guidance on how to improve their vision. The Sunera Foundation works with disabled young people all across the island and their goal is to help integrate differently abled people with society. The children take part in workshops at the Sunera Foundation for three hours a week.
The programme conducted by Graeae focused on helping the trainers understand who they were, teaching them different activities and games which they could do with the children they train and discussing the ways in which they can improve their impact. A performance of Romeo and Juliet using A4 sheets, sellotape, a few words and many gestures helped them understand how much they could achieve with a few resources. Thanuja Wijewickrama, who works at the Colombo centre feels that the workshop has helped her learn a lot about what can be done using sign language. “Before this workshop, we used signs only for deaf people. However, here we learnt that everyone can use signs. This is a great method of communication because anyone with virtually any disability, be it Down’s syndrome, hearing impairment or something else, can use signs to communicate. Understanding this concept helps us take our training further,” she said.
Jenny Sealey: The importance of hand signs
“Anyone can help ‘normal’ children but I feel that these children are helpless sometimes,” says Nilani Valnisingham, who works at the Mannar centre. She is very happy to have taken part in such a successful workshop and wants to use her newfound skills to help her students even more. Francis Anthony, who is from Hatton, agrees that this workshop helps them help his students more effectively.
Jenny is hopeful of the workshop’s success and feels that it is up to the trainers to take what they have learnt and pass it on to their students. To speak to the trainers is to understand that her exuberance and positive energy has definitely revitalized them, although Jenny feels that they are already hugely competent and capable by themselves. She feels that the end goal for everyone at the Sunera Foundation, and for people living with disabilities worldwide is the same. “I think the goal of the Sunera Foundation – the trainers, the young people and the parents is to use theatre to get a message across to stop stigmatizing disabled people. They may be physically different, they may communicate differently but they are human beings and they should have the same wants as anybody else and they should never ever be hidden away from society,” she says, adding that she hopes we get this message across to society.