We're Not Canute's Courtiers: A Personal Response to the Tsunami

I am sure I am not alone in being deeply moved by the images from the Indian Ocean earthquake disaster. Many will know people directly affected and I know we all send our sincerest sympathies to these individuals, their friends, and families.

The start of 2005 was devastating for a bewilderingly diverse group of communities, and it is difficult to fashion words or deeds that seem adequate as a response. Whether close to or far from the scenes of destruction, humankind has appeared at its most fragile in the wake of nature's worst.

Canute and His Courtiers

Our weakness in front of waves is reminiscent of the story of Canute. He was the Danish/English king of the 11th century, famous as the monarch who sat on a portable throne commanding the waves to recede. His failure to control nature was relayed to English children as an indication of the idiocy of absolute claims to authority. However, for the purpose of this article, it is important to remember that Canute was not the idiot. He performed his failure to prevent the encroachment of the waves to school his fawning courtiers in the limits of the king's power. His lesson is summed up in this final paragraph of the story:

"Well, my friends," Canute said, "it seems I do not have quite so much power as you would have me believe. Perhaps you have learned something today. Perhaps now you will remember there is only one King who is all-powerful, and it is he who rules the sea, and holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand. I suggest you reserve your praises for him."

(Bennet 1997)

As performance scholars we have a strong affinity for life patterns and behaviors that are human honed and constructed with a circumscribed yet real sense of agency. My research on theatre in war zones reflects these concerns, as both theatre and war are activities shaped by people. They have human hands in their creation and my interpretations leave little space for "praises for him." As a "performance person" I turn with ease to these actions but struggle where I do not or cannot see an actor's body. I need, somewhere, however diffuse and difficult to locate, a human as both my cause object and my blame object. I hate wars and I blame humans for them. I love startling theatre and I celebrate humans for their capacity to create it. We search for richly grained meanings in the turmoil of human life, but perhaps prefer not to kill off our authors/actors as easily as other cultural theorists.

The tsunami's erasure of coastal communities however has been a brutal vision of the limits of the power of the human actor/creator. Canute is once again our teacher reminding this performance practitioner that we "do not have quite so much power" as we would like to believe. The importance of his lesson is not in its insistence on "praise for him," but in its recognition that there are parts of life beyond human control. Although there are always actions, warnings, and preparations that can impact the natural event, even the most powerful appear feeble when faced with the inevitability of the tide.

Sri Lanka

I have had a personal connection to Sri Lanka for 20 years and have been researching and practicing theatre there for the last five. I have been interested in performance responses to the civil war and have professional links with colleagues particularly in the east of the island. In 20 years of civil war, Sri Lanka lost nearly 70,000 people. On 26 December 2004, at least half that number were killed in a single day. Batticaloa in the east, with 2,000 dead and 6,000 missing on 1 January 2005, was one of the worse affected areas. The village of Seelamunai, close to the center of Batticaloa, was almost totally destroyed. This village has become famous in recent years as the center for a project that has sought to "reformulate" the local performance form kooththu...