Life is a kind of struggle. Not even for social and physical needs such as hungry, thirsty, social status, power, dignity, life achievements, money, goods; struggles take their dominion for making decision as well. They are pressured us to make or choose something that we prefer most. But most of them don’t appear through humans’ behaviour.
Probably, they can be defined as inner struggles. Cultures, societies, believes, values, human experiences, knowledge make boundaries or conditions for them. Totally, the reactions and behaviour are the results of inner struggles. If someone can control or manage inner struggles, he can be a well-behaved person that have society expected. Everything depends on the ability to bear and manage our feelings, drives by inner struggles.
The recently staged ‘Illusion Net’ stage play, produced by Kapila Gamini Jayasinghe, is a texture of a discourse that reveals how inner mind struggles affect human behaviour. Nirodha Ranasinghe is a professionally well-known person who lives alone after his divorce. He has to face two toxic relationships because of his current unstable situation. Through his inner struggles of trying to get rid of loneliness, the story of stage play highlights some prominent features worth to discuss.
Conversation with inner mind
The story begins from a scene of Nirodha while having a better conversation with his inner mind. He tries to manage and heal his painful feelings about his divorce with his ex-wife. He reminds his past since he spent at university, where his relationship had grown. He tells all of these things not for another man but for himself, with alone, at a calm-dull place. Inner mind knows everything about Nirodha, that he tries to hide from others. He sings his own song that he wrote because his feelings that hurt him. It seems like a healing method, communicating with own self is probably occur to help him to balance his mentality to overcome from the usability and the loneliness.
Even though usually happening this without any awareness, the story perfectly caught that emotional exchange to the artistic work. The art work has used two roles that represent one person to show the inner struggle of a human and both roles want to be the best choice or to be the best advisor for Nirodha. Again, there is a struggle between the two of them to suppress the other.
Even though in the story, there can be seen two roles to show the inner struggle of Nirodha, physically, only one character can be seen. So, the role that doesn’t appear as physically, always tried to hide from others by Nirodha, with extra effort. Also, we can suggest that hidden character as the ego according to the Sigmund Froude theory. Eid is the innermost part of the mind with drives and inhumane personalities. Ego is the outer layer of the mind, that controls Eid by cultural values, believes, expectations that help to make a culturised human. So, many times inner mind, that Nirodha wants to hide from others, comes automatically from him to the outside.
Because of being so introverted after his divorce and the breakdown of his life, Nirodha has been addicted to his intra-communication. That’s why without his awareness suddenly his inner conversation comes out when he dealing with society.
Related with Nirodha’s necessity, Eid makes him impatient to start another relationship. So, the inner struggles happen when it processes to fulfil Nirodha’s needs. He wants someone to share his psychological needs including feelings, ideas, love, caring and preferences. Also, he needs to fill the position of a soulmate that lost by his divorce. It seems him to feel unfilled, even though he has everything, due to his broken feelings. So, immediately he wants to fulfil his feelings and that’s why he changes his mind to find a new relationship. So, he tried many but it didn’t make him better.
Social awareness
Again, it puts him into problems. The narration highlights about the social awareness on a divorced person who supposes to have another marriage. They are most neglected by the society because of the idea that someone who married first and divorced is not suitable for a partner who would newly marry. The story questions the idea, by emphasizing a meaning like, ‘Why divorce person cannot have another marriage with success?’, and also it gives a fatal hit to whom that thinks having a marriage after a divorce is a taboo.
People do everything to succeed. No one hope to live or spend his or her life with blanks. When someone has blanks in their lives it will become a stress to him. That’s why people try to do everything to overcome from blanks, as well as they can. Falling in love must be without any blanks. If someone gets a blank or has to put a full stop to their loved ones, it might be an unimaginable breakdown. When someone faced a bad situation like that his actions cannot be justified by any legal authority. The drama pointed these kinds of idea to justify Nirodha’s character at last even though he was arrested. For that, story reveals Nirodha with a sympathy by sinking into the character. The story explains how much pain the blanks left in the life of a person and also these blanks can change a person’s destiny.
Music in the drama is emotive and heart-touching. Pulitzer Prize – winning American dramatist Thornton Wilder’s theatrical concept of using a minimum number of props to express more is used in ‘Illusion Net’. Sometimes, the matter that should be socialised in a serious way is softened by humour, but it doesn’t seem an outstanding mistake with the plot.
The most significant thing is the concept that used to reveal the functionality of a human mind parallel to the incidents happen in life and as a cross-section of the human mind showing how the blanks in life change human’s destiny. It helps to make a better evidence to make his role more justify against to the social law and also it sounds the words of Charles R. Swindoll, “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.”
