The children of Sunshine Chennai Senior Secondary School pass by the Pallikaranai dumpyard every morning on their way to school, situated just around two kilometres away.
The students and their theatre and dance trainer, Andrea Jacob, wanted to bring this to public notice. And, what better way to do it than theatre! They began to work on a play last August. After several brainstorming sessions where they etched out scenes and dialogues, they’ve come up with a 55-minute production, Heal The World , which they stage today at Museum Theatre at 6 p.m.
The school has always produced plays, anchored on a social cause. This is its fourth production. “When we started the theatre club four years ago, our plan was to take up themes that children relate to. One of our earlier productions, called Eat, Play, Live , was on the culture of children bringing finger food to school,” says Andrea.
“Some of the dialogues in the play have been improvised. Even though it is an English play, we have used a smattering of Tamil too,” says Andrea. She made sure that the play would tell children that there is still hope. For this, she featured two characters in the play, inspired by the real-life stories of the two chief guests for the event — Siddharth Hande, founder of Kabadiwalla Connect and Supportive Cities, and Sivaraj Muthuraman, founder of Solar Car and Tea 2 Go.
“Kabadiwalla Connect consists of a young team, which up-cycles plastic and makes interesting things out of it. In the play, we also show children making a solar car out of material in a dumpyard; through this, we enact the story of Sivaraj Muthuraman,” she explains.
The costumes for the play have been created using up-cycled plastic and used garments. The music instruments too are up-cycled! “Children will bring tins filled with mustard and dal from their homes and use them as shakers. And, the drums are made of paint cans.”
The cast consists of 125 children, who will sing and perform. Around 45 of them are first graders. “The students have played an active part in writing dialogues. We wrote them in just two weeks. The kids have worked really hard,” says Andrea, adding she hopes they would some day, translate the play’s thoughts into action.
