• CITF Director M. Safeer on the local theatre fraternity and holding an international theatre festival in Sri Lanka

M. Safeer is a theatre director, playwright, publisher and author, the chairman of Inter Act Art, a theatre and performing arts group, and the festival director of the Colombo International Theatre Festival (CITF). His name is not unfamiliar or unknown in Sri Lanka’s theatre industry, not just for his work on and off stage, but also with establishing Sri Lanka’s first international theatre festival.

CITF 2023 will be held 25-30 August, with countries like India, Bangladesh, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, Romania, and Tunisia taking part. As preparations are underway for the festival, Safeer joined The Daily Morning to share details about CITF, the local theatre industry, and the power of language in theatre. “A lot of countries developed not with money, and an indicator of development in a country is its cultural fluency,” he said, speaking on the importance of international theatre festivals.

What can you tell us about the Colombo International Theatre Festival?

It was in 2012 that we held the Colombo International Theatre Festival for the first time, and we have been around for 11 years. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, we couldn’t hold a festival after 2019. We have thus held eight festivals, and will be this year returning after a three-year hiatus.

Since the start of King Vijaya’s reign in Sri Lanka to the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency in 2012, there have been no international theatre festivals in Sri Lanka. We only have a handful of international festivals in total, like the Colombo International Theatre Festival, Colombo International Book Fair, International Film Festival of Colombo, which was discontinued, the Galle Literary Festival, which was also discontinued, and the Jaffna International Cinema Festival.

Neighbouring India has close to 100 international theatre festivals alone, while Bangladesh has 3-4, Pakistan has 4, and Nepal has three. The standards of these festivals are another matter, but they are held.

Since 2005/2006, theatre practitioners from various countries have asked me how many theatre festivals our country has. And we had none to speak of, so each time I was asked this question, I would think about why we didn’t have a theatre festival and why we couldn’t do it. This brought us to the point of deciding to hold a theatre festival, regardless of whether it was a success.

Looking at the past decade, what I can say is that it was an extremely stupid decision, because I had no experience. To learn about love, we need someone to love, whether that love is right or wrong. Despite international theatre festivals being something this country had no experience with, I saw it as a very simple task, and only realised how complex it was once we got started.

It was after getting the first festival started that I began seeing the obstacles ahead of me, but by that point, I couldn’t turn back. This is why I said it was a foolish decision.

What does the programme typically look like?

Looking at the eight years we did the festival for, there are four segments: the opening ceremony, performances, theatre workshops, and the theatre forum. The opening ceremony is where we each year felicitate a local or foreign personality in the industry. Thus far, we have felicitated persons like Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra, K.B. Herath, Parakrama Niriella, Lucien Bulathsinhala, Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, Jayalath Manoratne, Somalatha Subasinghe, and Namel Weeramuni. The opening ceremony is also where we welcome foreign groups participating in the event.

The performances are held daily, with a performance or two per day, and 8-10 countries participating. The workshops are where locals can gain knowledge from the scholars visiting the country and the theatre forum is only for theatre directors and practitioners, from the visiting countries and local theatre. However, it must be said that the participation of local practitioners is sometimes zero.

This year, we have a group from Ukraine, and as a theatre director, I would like to know what’s happening in Ukraine. We are also a country that underwent a war, and we know the challenges we faced. We are also expecting a group from Romania, and I would like to know about Romanian theatre. This applies to the other countries participating as well.

Are there any changes to the festival this year?

There are 2-3 major changes to the festival this year. One is that we are having a monodrama competition, which is where only one actor can be on stage. We have converted the Colombo International Theatre Festival to an international award, with a monodrama competition held under the international and local category. We will be holding an awards ceremony on 30 August.

Participating in the festival this year are India, Bangladesh, Poland, Spain, Ukraine, Romania, and Tunisia. With two dramas from India and one each from the other countries, the festival will feature eight foreign productions.

The reason we have two productions from India is that every year, the highest number of applications we receive is from India. In 2019, for instance, we received 70 applications from India, so since it’s our neighbouring country, we took a policy decision to allow two productions from India.

We have selected five dramas under the local category.

At the Colombo International Theatre Festival this year, we will have the workshops and forum as per usual. And the festival will take place from 25-30 August.

You mentioned a lack of interest from Sri Lanka’s theatre fraternity. Can you elaborate?

As someone who has been involved in theatre for more than three decades, my feeling is that there is no one as insincere or envious as theatre personnel in this country. As an example, in 2021, Untouched, directed by Sujeewa Pathinisekara and presented by Inter Act Art Theatre, and of which I was the production designer, won Best Monodrama at the Sham Al Sheik international Theatre Festival held in Egypt.

In Sri Lankan history, if anyone has won an award in theatre, what we won was the most prestigious, and we were considered the best out of 302 productions. Believe it or not, in the past two years, not a single university, drama group or dramatist has come together to talk about this award. Not even the Cultural Affairs Ministry reached out to us about this award.

Those who represent Sri Lanka at the Olympics or Asian Games and their coaches receive various rewards. Yohani received land in Battaramulla for being popular globally with one song. My question is this: is our work below what Yohani has done? Is our award or festival of not as much value as these efforts? Is that why no one helps us?

When we bring dramas from countries like Georgia or Azerbaijan and show them for Rs. 1,000 or Rs. 1,500 in Maradana, not watching these is if not envy, what else? I have no other word for it. When we attempt to hold an international theatre festival in a country that hasn’t had one before with a small and limited group of supporters, not getting the support I desire is unfortunate. And this is a loss not to me, but the people, theatre aficionados, and future dramatists.

Globally, international festivals are not for the general public, but for the country’s dramatists and visiting dramatists, so they can get a better sense of theatre in other countries. When I go to Europe, for instance, I don’t meet the public there. Everyone I meet is linked to the theatre industry, from actors and designers to critics and writers.

I don’t understand why in Sri Lanka we are still struggling to attract dramatists to an international theatre festival. If I am being honest, there are theatre personnel in Sri Lanka who haven’t visited the festival even once during its eight years. I do wonder about them. Can they call themselves theatre personnel when they don’t even attend an international theatre festival taking place in Colombo?

How do you manage to go ahead with the festival despite this lack of support?

There are people who do support me. And I am not in this with a negative attitude. If I did, this festival would have ended a long time ago.

There are some State institutions that we wrote to in March that are yet to even acknowledge receiving our letter. However, this hurtful lack of support for a challenging and difficult task will leave this country without an international festival. But my dream is to see at least five international theatre festivals in this country.

I say this because I am where I am today because of the exposure and experience I have received globally. I met dramatists from across the globe thanks to this international bridge. If Sri Lanka has at least five international festivals, it will be of importance to Sri Lanka and to all dramatists in the country.

If any sector is to develop, it must be open to the world. Until 2012, countries that didn’t know about Sri Lanka and learnt about us because of the Colombo International Theatre Festival.

This is a major boost to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, the authorities treat this as a joke. I sometimes feel like they treat me as an enemy, because the more I do this and the more media coverage it receives, the more I feel like I am the enemy.

What does theatre in Sri Lanka look like? Are there divisions based on language?

It is divided 100%. Tamil theatre is based in Jaffna. Sinhala theatre is based in Colombo and the South. English theatre is limited to one or two spaces, like the Lionel Wendt or Bishop’s College. As a Muslim, I can work in Tamil, Sinhala and English, and what I see is the monopoly related to these sectors. In fact, you cannot call it a monopoly as per the word’s definition and since there is no authority body, but there is a monopoly being framed.

Secondly, there is a language barrier. If you stage a drama from Jaffna in Colombo, there won’t be a big enough audience. And if you take a Sinhala play to Jaffna, there will be no audience there at all. Within the theatre fraternity, the three languages have never sat at the same table and worked together.

However, if a group from Georgia, for instance, is here, regardless of the language, the creativity of Georgia is something we get to experience. They may do in a different way what a Sri Lankan actor cannot.

In my experience, a lot of dramatists today do not depend on language. They use physical words. My last four plays are 80-90% physical, and so I can stage one of my dramas anywhere in the world. In Asia, we tend to look at drama as a text-based script, but globally, this text-based script is being dropped. Today, the processes are content, ideology, and concept. The last output product is the theatre script, which is written later. In my last production, Love and Lockdown, the script was written at the very end. We developed the concept, ideology, and design, and finally went for the script. This is what I feel is the latest trend.

In Sri Lanka, we sometimes pay more attention to the language in a Shakespeare play than those in Shakespeare’s own country. In England, we see selected acts from Shakespeare plays and other classics. In Sri Lanka, we think even one missing word is a massive issue, so we are still at an era where a drama is enjoyed by the ear, but it is when we get to the era of enjoying a play by sight that we will find a path to change.

Chinese is one of the most spoken languages in the world, but it is only spoken in China, so taking a Chinese play outside the country isn’t easy. It’s the same with Hindi, English, or Arabic. So all dramatists are looking for a path ahead and we have seen that ‘without language’ is a secure path when going forward. This is a global trend.

In Sri Lanka, if we remove this idea of Sinhala language plays, Tamil language and English language plays, we can stage them anywhere in the country. We just need to remove that barrier, after which many issues will be solved.

In addition to vocals, an actor can use his body, flexibility, rhythms, and physics, as well as music, sets, costumes, video, and so many other new media. Thus, language is not as powerful in theatre now.