“How to have a political dinner?” was my performance in 3rd Platform performance Theetrha in Sri Lanka with the invitation of Nasim Pirhadi and Theetrha group.
This performance was done with participations of 107 people and duration of 2.40. I wanted to perform it in three nights but in the end two night was done. In the first night which you can see in pictures, the audiences were given 3 cards with A, B or C tag, after a short Q and A with me mostly about personal issues and politics. The ones who had C cards could use only the C table for dinner included lentil, pepper and rice.
the ones with the B cards could use B table included rice, salad and chicken soup, and finally the ones with A card could use all tables specially table A included rice, lentil, chicken, fish, soup, fried chicken, potato Omelet and fruits. The most people had C card and the least A, however the biggest portion was on the table A.
In the first conversation people were told they can ask the ones with A card to sign their cards with this justification: the card owner has the permission of using table A. the rest of the story was somehow predictable, some persons didn’t eat enough and left the gallery complaining, some others immediately ask A owner to sign their cards, and the last ones just eat from their supposed table ignorantly and said nothing. In this performance artists and audiences from 12 different countries such as Canada, Germany, India, Bangladesh, Greece, South Korea, Iran, Pakistan and… were participated.
I would like to thank @nasim.pirhadi, @azamart.sculpture, @bandumanamperi, @jeetinrangher, @natashajozi and @anushagajaweera who helped a lot in preparing foods and the performance which was not possible to be done without their help.
