People came in by themselves; we had only educated them

During Easter this year, Sri Lankan playwright, theatre director, and screenwriter Ruwanthie de Chickera received a text from her father, a priest: “How would it be if a priest could wash a protester’s feet?”

-  LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN

Though not religious, Ruwanthie found the idea brilliant. She tweaked it to bring in not one but 12 protesters, a nod to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples before the Last Supper. It resonated with the people.

Ruwanthie practises the ‘devising method of theatre-making, which involves creative collaboration with and improvisation by the performing ensemble. Yet, she is unable to believe how things unfolded in the past four months. What began as a people’s protest against the mishandling of the Sri Lankan economy blew up into a movement that came to be known as Aragalaya (struggle).

As the protest began on April 9 at the Galle Face Green, close to the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo, Ruwanthie, 47, met people from various walks of life, including many from her own fraternity whom she had not met in her 20-year-long career in theatre. And even those she had met earlier, she had never talked politics with them; Gota Go Gama (protest site) changed that.

It was based on these interactions that the core team behind Aragalaya was formed. “We all sat together to discuss what we can do to inject courage and inspiration into the movement,” she says.

On July 9, protesters stormed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence and, on July 13, he fled the country. It was not something that the core team knew would happen; they had only expected 10,000 people to show up. “People came in by themselves,” says Ruwanthie. “We had only educated them.” Edited excerpts from an interview:

Q. Why do you think the Aragalaya movement began?