Blazing Trails
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Vissa Chandrasekaram smashed taboos by staging the first ever gay play in Sri Lanka, writes Reg Domingo. Last month saw the launch of the Asian Tea Room at ACON, a new monthly social gathering hosted by the Asian Gay Men’s Project. In a relaxed and friendly environment, participants can enjoy an evening of talks, stories and imported tea chosen by the night’s special guest speaker. This month, it’s Sri Lankan Ginger Tea, a fitting selection handpicked by Sri Lankan-born activist, writer and performer, Vissa Chandrasekaram. Vissa, who moved to Sydney in 2001, is the author of six plays that have been performed across two continents. He was also the creative director of this year’s Mardi Gras Festival hit, Butterflies in the Mughal Garden. “I’ve been writing since I was a teenager,” Vissa tells SX. “And in my last year of university I wrote my first play called Forbidden Area, which was later rewritten as a gay play and performed under the name Forbidden Territory in last year’s Mardi Gras Festival.” The play, when it was first performed, drew controversy for its portrayal of suicide bombers. “However, it won award after award in Sri Lanka. So I became a writer and since then I’ve sold about six plays.” One of those plays is Bed of Nettles, the first gay play ever to be staged in Sri Lanka. It was a monumental feat considering that in Sri Lanka, homosexuality is still a criminal offence. “Everything that’s publicly performed in Sri Lanka has to go through the Public Performance Board,” Vissa says. “I wrote the play and organised everything from Sydney in 2002. And three months before the play was going to start, I was told that the play had been banned. The Performance Board refused to give a reason. Without a certificate from the Board, you can’t hire a theatre or do anything.” Torn but undeterred, Vissa decided to amend the play by turning all the gay characters straight. Surprisingly, the Board granted him a certificate. So he hired a venue and immediately had the actors perform the play in its original, gay form, while fielding calls from newspaper and television stations who rallied to his support. “The ban was a blessing in disguise,” Vissa says. “Because of all the media that surrounded the ban, we had so much attention and the theatre was full every night. Thousands of people came and watched the play.” The outcome was a victory for Vissa, whose passion is firmly rooted in human rights and activism. “I know it is just a play but it was very valuable in the sense of activism for me,” he says. “That was the first time we talked about gay relationships openly in Sri Lanka.” Today, Vissa works as a public servant and is currently writing a new play for Melbourne Workers Theatre. He is also involved with a social group for South Asians and is a PhD candidate. He says that he is happy as a man astride two cultures working on so many things, but also hopes to rekindle his activism ways very soon. “I think being gay is very liberating for me here in Sydney, because it is one of the biggest gay capitals in the world and there are people from a multitude of cultures concentrated here. “I feel very comfortable being who I am both in Sydney and Sri Lanka.”
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