Dead Man’s Cellphone:

‘Cellular’ relations and human realities

By Dilshan Boange

Theatre Junction, the theatre troupe headed by young Sri Lankan drama directress Anushka Senanayake, a student of drama and theatre at the Converse College USA, brought to life a theatrical vision of US playwright Sarah Ruhl’s script Dead Man’s Cellphone to a packed house and proved their prowess to deliver a good quality full length theatre production to theatregoers.

A scene from the play

The show enjoyed a two-night run in Colombo, on July 26 and 27. And I, seated in the gentle darkness at the British School auditorium on July 27 witnessed a remarkable show of thespian talent bring to life a US play that was well appreciated by Sri Lankan theatregoers. The announcement to welcome patrons that came over the public address system got interrupted with a cellphone ringtone that came over the sound system. Part of the drama’s thematic grains had been built into the offstage communication I thought!

Then the all too familiar request to kindly put cellphones on silent mode or switch them off was made. An astonishing truth about this show was that it is certainly the only stage yet watched by me, after the cellphone’s advent to the category of an ordinary mundane utility, where a cellphone didn’t cause that irritating disruption to viewers by ringing in the middle of the performance!

The ‘directive mark’

The storyline and dialogue narrative seemed possible to posit the drama as one than can be dramatised as a performance in the realism mould. But unless of course the script by Ruhl stipulated the direction to be of the nature of what was performed, the directress seems to have played with elements that blended threads of the surreal and using elements that brought in a facet of miming and dancing, which I felt brought out a sense of what may be 21st century ‘indie’ art.

The directress made her vision as an artist evident through her innovativeness. The single background prop functioned symbolically rather than serving the purpose of a realistic stage set. Stagehands moving visibly onstage shifting the props around and also doubling as the mimes like performers dressed in black added to the surreal element. The music functioned at certain points to signal shifts in the scene’s thematic essence.

An example is where the ‘deadness’ of the dead man –Gordon, is established, and before the narrative moves to the point of Gordon’s mother Mrs. Harriett Gottlieb’s eulogy at the funeral service, music that sounded like ‘Gregorian chants’ flowed in. Other songs and music used were very much of contemporary genre which added to the performance’s texture of western modernity.

Enter Gordon

Gordon’s first words are cut off with darkness that ends the first half of the play for intermission. I thought it was a powerful thrust to hurl the image of the dead man to the viewer. A man who is at the centre of the plot but doesn’t speak until that moment. His first word uttered –“I” gets cut off as if symbolically the darkness that ‘floods in’ kills Gordon. The suspenseful effect it creates is almost as if what one may feel if Beckett’s Godot actually arrived only to have the curtain descend without any explanation given as to why everyone waited for him! The stifling of a person’s speech is in some ways the killing of his being (within).

Chalana Wijesuriya delivered a persuasive performance showing attributes as unapologetic selfishness, brash ‘self centrism’, and condescension characterised Gordon ‘the living man’. I say so because the play projects a potent portrayal of the politics of characterisation in terms of who a person is in his own voice and is ‘made to be’ through the words of others.

Palatable fallacy

Played endearingly by Dinoo Wickramage with admirable acting talent, mercurially moving between expressions that were theatrically sharp; Jean, the timid and modest self-effacing young woman who good-heartedly becomes the agent who crafts the character of Gordon after his death, shows what power an ‘agent’ or a representative, self appointed or otherwise, can wield over the absentee. How much of our ‘self’, our ‘character portrayal’ do we submit on a daily basis to ‘agents’, to ‘reps’ who may at times be institutionally designated to do so, or may be requested by us to do so for necessity? How much of those ‘reps’ give life to the actual person whom they claim to speak for?

Anushka Senanayake

The human being is a creature haunted by mortality. The consequence that arises to some would be the dilemma of what their legacy left in the memory of the living, may be! Jean represents an element of goodness in society that believes in using opportunity for sincere good, by making the kin of the deceased Gordon whom she had never spoken a word with, feel love for their lost loved one. And also feel they were meaningful in the life of the deceased. But it is all fictitious.

Jean is the perpetrator of a fallacy to achieve a salutary outcome for the living. And the adventure of constructing an imaginary character that intrigues her causes her to develop a love for her ‘version’ of Gordon.

Dead man’s Cellphone is rather telling of how the digital age creates greater pursuits of escapisms for people who find their lives becoming more and more ‘atomised’ through lack of face to face interpersonal connectivity. ICT today can distance us as much as it connects us. It can create illusions of connectivity with room for subjective interpretations in ways that cause dreadful misreading.

Glimpsing Jean

Jean shows that human duality wanting to drift in flights of imagination and also yearn for what is true to life and real to the touch. Her own creation called Gordon and the string of stories concocted pretending to be a colleague of the dead man, shows how she romances the idea of fantasy. At the point where she visits the stationery shop where Gordon’s brother Dwight works and immerses in the feeling of caressing various kinds of paper and says each feels different, like ‘leaves’, ‘branches’ and says heaven must be like ‘an embossed invitation card’, she shows how the thing that affirms to us the physical truth of our existence in this world –the ‘touch’ speaks to our senses as a truth truer than words.

Darker dualities

Sulochana Perera who played Mrs. Gottlieb lived up to her role convincingly as did Tasmin Anthonisz as Gordon’s widow Hermia, while Shazad Synon brought to life a soft spoken man with inhibitions whose character complemented Jean’s. An interesting point to note is Gordon and Hermia speak of hidden desires about indiscretions while in bed together. Hermia’s feeling of being no longer desired by her husband had led her to fantasise that she was her own husband’s mistress whom he would enjoy being intimate with, to delude herself to think she is appreciated. Dualities in human self perceptions are undeniable.

Self-deception can be a powerful thing. But who in fact would Hermia be in such a dichotomised situation? The story thus also speaks of secret tribulations and insecurities people face in their relationships. One of the most telling lines being when Gordon tells Jean, in the ethereal plane, ‘you must be careful of whom you fall in love with’.

I saw the character of Jean as an agent for ‘love construction’, creating sentiments of love for Gordon in his family members. Her agile thinking and clever word crafting wittiness enable her to survive as a believable source of ‘revelations’. This role she assumes also reveals her ability to speak with a poetic touch. When Jean tells Hermia that Gordon, despite his indiscretions, loved her and had said of Hermia -‘She walks in, and time stops’ the line had a powerful lyricism to it that struck me as a line which resonates the feel of what one encounters in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient; in the likeness of a line the Count Ladislaus de Almasy may say reposing near lifeless, speaking of his lost love.

Sri Lankans and ‘dark comedy’

What do theatregoers expect from a stage play? Do drama producers and theatre practitioners here dwell into this question introspectively I wonder. When Sri Lankans go to the theatre they like to laugh, actor Gihan de Chickera once told me. Comedy is mostly what works here in terms of commercial success. Dead man’s cellphone, however, isn’t really a comedy intended to tickle your ribs and leave you in stitches. Although Mrs. Gottlieb says. “I keep forgetting he’s dead” in the flow of some amusing dialogue with Jean, Sulochana Perera delivered that line with a staid and desolate face. Yet some noticeable robust laughter arose from the audience to that particular line.

How much of the ‘darkness’ in a ‘dark comedy’ do Sri Lankan’s appreciate? How much of it do we digest and make part of our afterthoughts and reflection? Theatre’s potential to be a catalyst for social transformation and not serve as entertainment alone relies greatly in the perceptiveness the audience has to the nuances that are messaged as part of the subtext, created partly through tone and expression. I hope my own afterthought on this subtopic offers some food for thought to spur ‘critical viewer’ perceptions amongst theatregoers to infuse more social engagement with the theatre as a space that serves more than the goal of entertainment.

‘Theatre junction’, despite being comparatively young in the Sri Lankan English theatre circuit, shows immense potential. Dead man’s Cellphone may perhaps be viewed as an ‘amateur production’ on account of the visible ‘youngness’ of the players; but that is due to ‘physiology’. The talent that unveiled on stage proved to be applause worthy and deserving recognition. The production was for certain, a triumph. A triumph, one hopes, that will be followed by many more in time to come.