Gillo, the prolific theatre repertory dedicated to young audiences, open two new productions this week in Mumbai. The first is Captain Coconut and the Case of the Missing Bananas, a detective caper in English directed by Shaili Sathyu, at Prithvi Theatre. Over the weekend, they will premiere an anthology of four pieces, Story Quilt . A book Sathyu discovered years ago, Captain Coconut… always struck her as a piece that lent itself well to solo performance. She planned to take it up as part of an in-house studio project to develop single-actor shows, but the play was first staged in Kannada during one of Gillo’s cross-regional bus tours, now developed into an ensemble piece. The bumbling central character was performed in Kannada by the Bengaluru-based Sandeep Jain, supported by a constellation of other actors who chimed in with multi-lingual riffs. “We have completed 22 performances in Kannada,” says Sathyu. While Jain returns for the English-language opening, shows will also be performed by an alternate cast, spearheaded by Gillo regular Ghanshyam Tiwari. The shift in language allowed supporting characters to handle more dialogue than just bit phrases in Kannada.
Flexible performances
Captain Coconut… is a fully illustrated book brought out by the independent publishing house Tara Books, that has completed 25 years in the business. It is written by Anushka Ravishankar and Priya Sundram. Ravishankar counts Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear among her influences. A 2014 stage adaptation of her Catch that Crocodile! is also part of Gillo’s roster of productions. Both the plays developed from Ravishankar’s works are quirky and nonsensical. “They are ‘silly plays’ with ridiculous premises that the audiences go along with, and which might not have the underlying message of transformation most of our plays are associated with,” explains Sathyu. While Catch that Crocodile! involved a crocodile who mysteriously arrives in town and stubbornly refuses to leave, Captain Coconut… deals with the aftermath of a banana heist, that brings small-town denizens under the radar of suspicion.
During their bus tours, Gillo have often encountered ‘found spaces’ for performances that have been logistically challenged both in terms of size of performing area or basic infrastructure. Their plays are staged by medium-sized ensembles and crews that many venues can accommodate, but not all. “We were looking to create flexible performances that can be staged in even ultra-small spaces. This would give us opportunities to reach children who don’t have access to, say, an auditorium,” says Sathyu. Members of the repertory company have all worked towards the development of one-handers, under her mentorship.
Diverse themes
Four of these intrepid one-actor projects feature in the opening run of Story Quilt. They are Tiwari’s ‘Ludakta Pahiya’, Barkha Fatnani’s ‘The Mountain That Loved A Bird’, Atul Somkuwar’s ‘Music for Joshua’ and Ritul Singh’s ‘Frederick’ — a diverse miscellany of themes and styles that still fit in with Gillo’s overarching sensibility. With very few recruits taken in over the last couple of years, the group’s current crop of actors include many hold-outs. Over a decade-long existence, actors remain with the repertory for an average of three years each, even if only a one-year commitment is initially sought from newcomers. Some ‘veterans’ like Tiwari, Prasad Dagare and Nishna Mehta have stayed with the outfit, known for its professional approach and congenial processes, over almost its entire lifetime.
Story Quilt has specially benefited Sathyu’s actors. “Solo performances gives them a platform to explore their own ideas and skills very differently than in an ensemble. Their stage presence also gets a boost when they return to group projects. They hold the stage very different, for instance,” she elaborates. At Gillo, opportunities continue to come their way — 2018-2019 was the first time the group was able to cross the magical figure of a hundred performances in one financial year.
Captain Coconut and the Case of the Missing Bananas will stage today at Prithvi Theatre at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.; Story Quilt will stage at St. Andrews Centre for Philosophy & Performing Art on May 26. More details on bookmyshow.
