Across the hinterland with Gillo Repertory

For Shaili Sathyu, artistic director of the Gillo Repertory, it was a long-term dream to travel with her theatre company on a road trip to the interiors of the country taking the power of live performance to children’s doorsteps. Last November, that once fanciful idea was borne out in truth, when a team from Gillo finally completed a 15-day stint in Karnataka as part of Gillo on the Go , which is what they’ve dubbed their touring wing. Now, less than a year later, the group, which specialises in theatre for younger audiences, are raring to go on a much longer trip this time, and have added towns and villages in Maharashtra to their itinerary. A 12-day first leg in the state will take place in October, followed by a brave 23-day sojourn to Karnataka in late November. Like the last time, packed into a single mini-van will be cast and crew alike, as well as production equipment for plays, teaching resources for workshops and books for the many library sessions to be organised.

Sweet and spicy

In the first edition, 16 schools in 11 locations spread across 2878 km were covered, reaching more than 3,000 children and adults. Because the venture was partially crowd-funded, several of the metrics associated with the tour were published in an executive report shortly after the tour concluded. Earlier this year, Gillo also organised an ‘Artists in Dialogue’ event in which repertory members met with stakeholders who had contributed to the fruition of the tour. In Karnataka, they toured with three plays — their signature piece

Hanuman ki Ramayan , which recently completed a hundred shows,

Catch The Crocodile! and

One to Ten — performing 19 shows in all. A heartening aspect of the experience was the enterprising manner in which six local partners offered their own meagre resources to facilitate Gillo’s tour. These included the Shantala Kalavidaru in Chamarajanagar, the Dr. Gubbi Veeranna Trust, named after the iconic pioneer of Kannada theatre, and Heggodu’s Ninasam, one of the country’s premier institutions of theatre training. They generously arranged for venues for performances and workshops, accommodation and local outreach.

For the ten-strong team who participated in the first tour, it was certainly an uncommon experience. Some of them fondly recounted their experiences at the stakeholders meeting. The rigours of journeying aside, being on the road on a tightly programmed schedule entailed a disciplined and holistic approach to each day. The tour was hailed as a spiritual renewal by some, and certainly much more than a character-building exercise. For one actor, traveling with her own blanket ensured a return to the warm and familiar each night after a full day’s work. Quite apart from the pleasures of performing and interacting with young audiences, the unique culinary delights that each part of the region threw up was raison d’être enough to undergo the trip for some. Karnataka cuisine changes dramatically across the state, and the long stretch from Heggodu to Heggadadevana Kote was likely both culturally and gastronomically enriching.

Bonding on the go

In the end,

Gillo on the Go proved that travel is a great leveller and strengthened the ensemble’s bonds with each other. As many as five repertory members from the first tour are part of the second edition. Apart from Sathyu, they are Atul Somkuwar, Dhanesh Gopalakrishnan, Barkha Fatnani and Janit Temkar, one of Gillo’s young ‘veterans’. Included in the second tour’s showcase is

Chidiya, Udd! , Sathyu’s first play for toddlers, which premiered earlier this year at Visioni, an international festival for Theatre for Early Years organised in Bologna, Italy. The show, performed by Fatnani and Gopalakrishnan, was Gillo’s first-ever overseas outing, and has since been staged sporadically in India. During the tour, true to its billing, it will introduce theatre to an even younger demographic.

Less than a week remains before the company embarks on the first leg of the 2018 tour, which will take them to locations like Dahanu, Sonale, Kamshet and Silvassa. The Company Theatre in Kamshet, and Geetanjali Kulkarni’s Sonale-based QUEST that runs its own children’s theatre outreach programme, are two of their local facilitators, and Gillo have already organised exchanges with them earlier this year. Once again, a crowd-funding initiative on Ketto is slowly gathering steam, with around one lakh raised of a ₹ 5,00,000 goal, with more than two weeks left for the campaign to end.

To contribute to the Gillo on the Go’s Ketto campaign. please visit the website: ketto.org/ fundraiser/gillo2018