A timely play where the personal and political collide
Studiolusion presents “Skylight” by David Hare at the Punchi Theatre on April 4-6, 2024. “I thought the play was very relevant,” says Director Tasmin Anthonisz, explaining why this play, and why now. “It highlights how when you come from privilege, you don’t have actual interaction with the people you’re making policies for - how removed you are from the real life situation.”
The play centres on Kyra, a maths teacher in an underprivileged part of the city, who has turned her back on the daily comforts of life (a nice place to live, a good heater for the winter) in order to relate better to the people she works among. Most of the action happens in her sometimes-frivolous, sometimes-heavy conversation with her former lover, Tom, a wealthy, older businessman.
The play relies on dialogue to maintain that relevance, and one of the key goals for Tasmin as director is to make sure the light, witty parts of the dialogue balance the weight of the heavier, deeper parts. “What needs to happen in the play, to carry it, is that two people need to just have a conversation.” To that end the cast have taken the script apart and put it back together. “The beginning of my process is text-intensive,” Tasmin explains, adding that she examined each line with the cast, working on context and emotional progression.
They also met with the legendary playwright Sir David Hare when he was in Sri Lanka last month for the Ceylon Literary Festival and talked to him about the play. “He had a lot of insights to share about the play, the characters, how to get into their mindsets and what to focus on.”
Tasmin also asked Hare what would define a bad production - as opposed to a good one. He responded that if the second half is better than the first half, then the play is a good production. “So right now we’re going deep into the second half,” Tasmin says, emphasizing that “there’s a lot going on there.” The first half of the play seems to focus on the two former lovers reconnecting while the second half fleshes out the ideological differences between the two.
“It’s really interesting how their relationship plays out over their lofty ideals,” Tasmin points out. “Tom and Kyra are to each other an idea of escape, but the ideological barriers between them make their relationship impossible.”
The cast for this production includes Ayudhya Gajanayake in the main role of the idealist Kyra, Rehan Almeida as her former lover Tom and Akmal Hamid as Edward, Tom’s teenage son. Lighting, which is particularly important to this show (the play is called “Skylight”), will be handled by Ryan Holsinger.
“I wanted actors who were age appropriate, easy to work with, and capable of carrying the production,” Tasmin says of her cast. She took a naturalist approach, looking for actors who already possessed certain characteristics of the roles they were called on to play. Ayudhya and Akmal were an easy choice for the director as Kyra and Edward. “But Tom is a narcissistic, snobbish, control freak who really just wants the world to go his way, and I didn’t necessarily want to work with someone like that!” Tasmin laughs, describing the third character. She asked around and after some consideration decided to pitch the idea to Rehan Almeida who she felt was capable of portraying Tom’s complex character and, as it turned out, was happy to accept. “Rehan is nothing like Tom, he is a very lovely person,” Tasmin clarifies.
The first time Tasmin read “Skylight” was exactly ten years ago, in 2014, during the course of her studies at the University of Manchester where she read drama and screen studies. She chose to work with it for a directorial module of her academic programme mostly because it was doable - the play calls only for three actors, and one scene. “I hadn’t been in this political economic climate at the time, so it seemed too heavy for me to come back and produce,” Tasmin says. Then in 2023, she watched parts of a filmed production by the National Theatre, and in the crux of the economic crisis unfolding around her, the play resonated with her in an entirely different way. “I reread the play and fell in love with it,” she confesses. “It’s beautiful.”
As with many (most/all) of Hare’s works, the politics are overt. The original context was a growing public vs. private controversy in Britain. Needless to say, long years and long miles away the conversation remains valid in Sri Lanka, today. Studiolusion presents ‘Skylight’ by David
Hare at the Punch Theatre, April 4-6 at 7 p.m. Contact 0762267905 on WhatsApp to
reserve tickets priced at Rs. 2500 and Rs. 2000. This show is for adults only.