Mother Courage Auditions

Last week we held auditons for Mother Courage. I requested that each actor improvise a short scene in which the situation required saying his or her name a number of times. This was a ploy for to me learn their names as well as a way to find out their imaginative capability. At great length Anoja and I explained that we wished a real - in their imaginations - situation, and that they do not to come out on stage and say their name twenty times in twenty different ways. We explained this several times in three different languages: Singhala, Tamil and English.

Tuesday morning. First audition, an experienced actor kicks the session off. He comes out, he starts saying his name over and over with no situation, he gives different emotions to each recitation. I stop him. I explain the task. I offer a situation. Then we see a lttle scene. Lovely. As each actor emerges onto the stage this happens over and over! One lad, from Trincolmalee, after saying his name a few times and once he had clicked into our request, started to demonstrate being searched at a check point. Stop. What emotion does your body feel in this situation? I asked him. We talked about this together, and then gave him time to prepare. This time his fear and helplessness were palpable. This was a man being beaten, tied up, imprisoned. Later he told us of this occasion, how he had been held and questioned for over 24 hours with no food and no access to outside help. He was beaten and his hands were tied. He was told his parents were outside and they had told the police their son was a member of the LTTE. At one point he thought it would be easier to say he was, but then thought to himself: Why lie? So he didn't, he endured. Finally he was let free, on the proviso that he report and sign every Sunday, which he did for the next two years. Then he smiled. Now, when the police do a 'round up' they know me, and tell me to go home!

Next day, Wednesday. The company have now understood the task. Another check point, and yet another check point scene. I begin to get a picture of life in Trinco for these young men.

I ask the next check point actor to not be himself but to be the soldier arresting him, become the man working at that check point, a man afraid, fed up with being away from his family, angry at the situation, seeing the local people as a threat. He thought about this, he found the feeling, he went for it. His anger was huge and real, he knew this situation well, he had observed the soldiers working on these road blocks all his life. Not all of them, but some of them.

Through these auditions Anoja and I are learning what life is like in a war zone. A learning curve for us as well as our actors.