You taught me language, and my profit on it is I know how to curse. Thus spoke Caliban in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Now, a new play takes one of the most marginalised characters in English literature into the war zones of Sri Lanka where he learns a new language, one that highlights the victims in the state’s fight against the LTTE — two lakh Tamils thrust into relief camps in Serendip, and journalists who have been arrested for alleged anti-government stories. In About Caliban: Also About Colombo, directed by Parnab Mukherjee, which will be staged during the Fourth Peace Day Festival at the India Habitat Centre on Tuesday, Shakespeare’s text merges with that of dissident writers like the Jaffna-based Shanmulingam, Sumathy from Colombo and RA Cheran, who now lives in Canada.

“Caliban in our play is not just marginalised, he is also a voice of protest. Shakespeare had restricted his dialogues to 42 lines but for us, he is the main protagonist,” says Mukherjee. The actors are students of Loyola College in Chennai, where the play premiered a week ago as part of the Hamara Shakespeare outreach project. The Delhi show is part of a 15-part India tour. The play begins with seven Calibans taking to the stage; though the stress is on Sri Lanka, the Calibans also represent violent regions like East Timor, black areas of New York, Nandigram, Imphal and Singara in India apart from Kandy and Jaffna in Sri Lanka.

“The action is not restricted on a proscenium stage. Actors emerge from under chairs and from the side entrances. They move up and down the aisles and the choreographies involve chairs,” says Mukherjee, adding that he wanted “to shake up the audience”. The “live music” increases this effect with metallic sounds made with steel taps and electric scotch tape being used to replicate machine gun sounds. “The action will unfold against a backdrop of videos from Sri Lanka. It is illegal to watch these in Sri Lanka but they circulate underground,” says Mukherjee.

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