I hate working with kids. Not because I don’t like children (I actually am quite fond of the little critters), but every time I try to get them to do something formalised, it ends in disaster. For years, I have resisted working with children. But we are all servants to the larger theatre group. So when it was decided that Thespo would create a play for kids with kids, I had no choice but to dive in.
Most things went according to plan. We found an able young twenty-something director in Abhishek Saha. We found eight wonderful young ‘uns, who are more keen and eager to get on stage than most actors. We found an excellent support team to play the “adult” parts and help in the rehearsal process. Suddenly all my fears seemed to vanish. This was easy… or was it? What was the play we were going to do? Ah, yes the script!
Surely finding a play to do for children can’t be so hard? Mumbai, particularly over the last few years, has had a vibrant theatre scene for children. Each summer at least four or five new productions are born. Fuelled primarily by the Summertime at Prithvi Festival, troupes rehearse vigorously in the month of April to open new plays in May and June. Groups that ordinarily do serious, intense work are suddenly trying to unlock magical, mysterious worlds for children. Ipta, Yatri, Ekjute, AKvarious and numerous other companies have up to four or five children’s plays each. Where have all these scripts come from?
Largely, children’s plays in Mumbai are adaptations — either of Western books or of Indian stories. The former is very popular; there are versions of The Little Prince, Five Find Outers, Life of Pi, Haroun and the Sea of Stories and most recently even Tintin. Indian stories revolve around the customary Panchatantra, Jataka Tales and other folk stories; though recently a fine stage adaptation was made of Ruskin Bond’s stories. But actual plays for children are very hard to find. This is not surprising since playwrights in India in general are few and far between. However, Ramu Ramanathan’s The Boy Who Stopped Smiling was a monster hit. So why aren’t there more? A little research into published works threw up only one or two titles — a collection of short plays by Sai Paranjpe and a collection by the most consistent children’s theatre playwright Poile Sengupta. However, none of the plays we found quite suited what we wanted to do. Either too many characters (they had been written for an entire school to perform) or too short (less than 45 minutes).
Numerous books were read. Many ideas were floated — adapting Malgudi Days, Dog Detective Ranjha, a stage version of the film Hungama Bombay Ishtyle, all sorts. Eventually, we settled on the most fundamental of processes — write one yourself.
Abhishek had a short 20-minute play which we used as a starting point. And then our “life guard” Akash Mohimen rescued it to create a beautiful story entitled The Mighty Mirembayanna and the Prisoners of Peace. The process was fun, communal and very exciting. Each of us putting on our child avatars to think what would really excite us. We all went back to our “half pant” years to think what we would have enjoyed. Slowly, clarity emerged, and now we have a proper script.
With the text sorted out, we plough on to the rest of the show. The stars are gradually aligning and the play is slowly taking shape. Hopefully, magic will happen. We are a little tight on time. We open on June 1 and 2, at Prithvi.
Come, see if I still hate working with kids.