A collective trauma shared between five characters
It was a haunting night at the Goethe Institut in Colombo, when Kälam Theatre from Jaffna presented ‘I’m Hungry, Too’ to the strains of traditional Yaalpaanam music – a Tamil theatre performance made up of a series of arresting monologues.
The chill we felt had nothing to do with the pre-seasonal December nip in Colombo: the five actors had dramatic tales of tragedy to share from the 40 years of the Northern war- tales of endurance that have left their souls battered; their hopes spent…
Haunting performances: A scene from ‘I’m Hungry, Too’
Written and directed by the promising Nicholas Kirutharshan (38), the play was stark and minimalist: basically about a theatre director wanting to bring out the experiences of those afflicted by the war; a mirror to what Nicholas himself is doing…
Five souls driven hither and thither like ashes by the war, spoke out their harrowing experiences.
Nicholas Kirutharshan : Spurred by the stories of ordinary people
There is the little girl whose father disappeared amidst violence in 1997; a Mullivaikkal veteran who experienced the last stages of the war; a former landowner from Palali in an Internally Displaced People’s camp; an elder recalling the early stages of the conflict when the Jaffna Library was set on fire and the Muslim population expelled from the peninsula overnight; another living in Germany now and dreaming of returning to Vadamaarachchi.
Nicholas’s greatest power has been to draw on the personal experiences of victims, of which he spoke to as many as 25, stitching together their collective trauma and sharing this between the five characters. The play was co-directed by Arunthavanathan Prashanth.
Kälam, begun in February 2020 by the Goethe Institut and Nicholas, is a space in Jaffna for cultural encounters and events of diverse nature.
Heading Kälam, Nicholas himself has suffered deeply from the war. He knew no answer to the question “where are you from?”, having moved from Silalai in Jaffna to Vavuniya and several other cities, before moving to Jaffna and Vavuniya again many times over – his temporary homes often destroyed.
Two actors spoke of their own personal experiences, of losing land to the High Security Zone and also of the last stages of the war.
Nicholas says he was inspired by the production “My name is Tamizh: Three lives” where Sankar Venkateswaran and Leow Puay Tin wove together eyewitness accounts of Tamils during the war (amongst whom was Nicholas) for the SPIELART and Basel theatre festivals.
Nicholas was always spurred by the fact that the stories of the ordinary people (or even the gentry) in the North have not been documented and discussed.
A mix of the storytelling traditions of old Jaffna performances (where song and dance were vital against the vibrant backdrop of gopuram and exotic pageantry) and modern theatre, I’m Hungry, Too gives a foretaste of Kälam productions yet to come; the only snag being that sometimes the English subtitles were not that well-synchronized with the act itself.
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