- Power of Play Founder and Artistic Director Sulochana Dissanayake on their latest performances and more
By Shailendree Wickrama Adittiya
Children have been robbed of the opportunity to be children, with the Covid-19 pandemic limiting their interactions with society and the economic crisis contributing to this. However, Power of Play is continuing their efforts to give children a voice and be actively involved in their lives.
This is mainly done through interactive performances, including Thoppi Welenda (The Hat Seller’s Tale), which will be presented by Power of Play at S. Thomas’ Preparatory School today (7) and tomorrow (8), as well as at the Myrus Colombo Centre in Thimbirigasyaya from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday (10).
The Morning Brunch reached out to Power of Play Founder and Artistic Director Sulochana Dissanayake, who shared details about the performance as well as the importance of interactive performances.
“What is unique about our performances is that they are interactive. It’s not like going to a theatre, sitting down, and watching a show. Here, we invite the children to become part of the show,” she said, explaining that children are invited to dress up as monkeys or hat sellers, for instance, or are given the opportunity to be part of the story.
She explained that if a child is asked how “Kiri Maama” (the titular character in Sybil Wettasinghe’s Kuda Hora or The Umbrella Thief) came from Kosgama to Colombo and they say he travelled by jet plane, the child isn’t corrected, saying that is not what the book says. Instead, the child’s suggestion is immediately incorporated into the performance.
“When I travelled to the US, Europe, India, South Africa, and Indonesia, I realised how little power we give children in Sri Lanka. Children have very few opportunities to speak and get engaged in the decision-making process in Sri Lanka,” she said, adding that children are rarely given the opportunity to contribute their ideas at home, school, or public spaces, which results in them not being actively involved in their own lives.
“Everything is decided for them. This is a direct result of raising adults who do not have their own voice,” Dissanayake said, adding: “To have socially conscious citizens as adults, we have to provide opportunities for that when they are children.”
She explained that you can’t label children as well-behaved, disciplined, or good by forcing them into a box, especially within an education system that is so outdated – it doesn’t encourage any form of critical thinking.
This is why it is important that children impact these stories, and are gently dispelled of the view: “I’m right, you are wrong”. This liberates children.
Building social skills
Power of Play also holds a public programme on Monday evenings, called Camp Kreativ, which takes the approach of integrated learning, and weaves in early literacy, maths, and science with puppet play, stories, and live music.
“Children who are very reserved at the beginning gently find their voice. They become communicative. A lot of parents reached out to me when we started Camp Kreativ in February and said: ‘My child doesn’t speak. Can I bring him for your sessions?’ Because Covid-19 robbed children of social interactions,” Dissanayake said, explaining that this in turn adds stress to the caregiver.
“Our spaces are not just non-judgmental for the children; they are non-judgemental for the adults as well. We don’t make any judgments; whether your child can or can’t speak or dance doesn’t matter to us. This is just a safe space for them to come and play freely with other children,” she said, adding that you can see how they slowly build social skills by playing together, sharing toys, fighting, disagreeing, agreeing, creating something together, and engaging in imaginative play.
“We learn a lot watching them interacting with each other and the adults are in the space making sure they are physically and mentally safe. There is no lesson plan that we follow.”
Power of Play
Speaking about Power of Play, Dissanayake said the idea took root when she was about three years old, as she was very passionate about storytelling and drama. The value for arts, stories, and culture is ingrained in her family, and both her parents are big supporters of the arts.
At a very young age, her father got her membership at the British Council, after which Dissanayake went to all their drama workshops. She has an older brother and an older sister, and said her parents always encouraged them to follow their passions in life.
As a child, her father took her to meet author Sybil Wettasinghe. “We grew up with her books and as an adult, I always had the dream of bringing her stories to life.”
As a teenager, she saw the works of Ruwanthie de Chickera and was impressed by how she brought local stories to the stage.
Dissanayake was involved in the performing arts while schooling at St. Bridget’s Convent, Colombo, and wanted to pursue theatre for her higher studies, but wanted to look at the value of our own stories, as she felt the English theatre culture in school was removed from our immediate realities.
She went on to double major in theatre and economics at Bates College, USA, for which she got a 90% scholarship.
“I decided to double major in theatre and economics because I wanted to come back and not do theatre as a hobby, but do theatre as a career. And with the guidance of my older brother and family, I felt that theatre has to be based on science to make it a sustainable business.”
Dissanayake graduated in 2009 and was one of 40 graduating seniors to win a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which granted students a scholarship to study for a full year anywhere in the world.
“I chose South Africa and Indonesia because both countries have a very long history of puppetry and folk arts – and both of them were colonised, both of them have severe social, economic, political, and communal issues, and they use arts as a solution.”
Returning to Sri Lanka in 2010, she hit the road running with one of Power of Play’s first initiatives, which was bringing Sybil Wettasinghe’s stories to life. This programme came about after Dissanayake reached out to Wettasinghe, who then introduced her to Expographics, where the dramatised storytelling took place once a month.
Dissanayake added: “Power of Play officially began in 2011, but we’ve been in Sri Lanka since 2010. Our core goal is to utilise performing arts, with a special focus on puppetry and theatre, to communicate socially critical messages for 21st Century Sri Lankans.”
Speaking about the Thoppi Welenda performances this week, Dissanayake said she was overjoyed when S. Thomas’ Preparatory School invited them for their Book Week. Since the school has Sinhala, Tamil, and English medium classes, it will be a trilingual show. The show on Saturday is open to the public, and is ideal – but not limited to – families with children aged three to 12 years.
In celebration of Children’s Day on 1 October, Power of Play is also partnering with the British Council and taking their performances to British Council centres in Colombo, Jaffna, and Kandy.
Dissanayake said this year has been the hardest yet, with very few opportunities available.
“I don’t need to tell you how difficult living in Sri Lanka is and from the 2019 Easter attacks and then Covid-19 and the economic crisis, Sri Lanka has never been easy for artists, even before that. But somehow we are like ants – if there’s a morsel of opportunity, we take it and we build a mountain out of it. That’s how artists are. We are extremely resilient.”
For more information on Power of Play, please visit www.powerofplay.lk or find them on Facebook/Instagram @powerofplaypvtltd. To attend the performance on 10 September, WhatsApp 076 301 4833
