Last year when Yuki Ellias was commissioned by the Prakriti Foundation to stage a solo show for The Park New Festival 2016, little did she know that The Elephant In the Room , would go on to win three honours (Best Actor-Female, Best Costumes, Best Light Design) at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META).
The play is a quirky look at Lord Ganesha’s beheading and depicts the angst of a young boy, Master Tusk, who has been given an elephant’s head. Confused and bewildered, he runs away from home and loses his way in the forest. In the process, he encounters a motley couple – Makadi (spider) and Moork (poacher), who kidnap him. But their scheme goes awry when a prophecy is revealed and changes everything. Amidst a cursed love affair, an encounter with an eccentric old elephant and a hunt for a missing head, Master Tusk sets off on a life-altering adventure.
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Layered storytelling
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The urge to question Indian mythology and reinterpret Lord Ganesha’s story in a poignant way prompted Ellias to conceptualise the play. “We have grown up listening to many myths and fairy tales. As a kid you believe all of them, but when you grow up you start questioning them. Indian mythological tales have a magical quality as there are many ways to look at them and interpret them. I wanted to explore what happens when Ganpati goes to the forest. It’s a fictional tale in the middle of a myth.”
The production, which is entertaining and thought provoking, tackles multiple themes with ease. While on a holistic level, it is a coming of age story, it also talks about universally relevant themes of deforestation, the migration of animals and draws parallels with the refugee status of human beings in many countries across the world.
While developing the story, Ellias always had an adult audience in mind. It was only when the directors of the Hyderabad Children’s Festival saw the show last year and asked her to stage it for them did she realise that it was being perceived as a children’s production. “They felt kids would connect with it. Till the day of the show I was apprehensive as 700 kids were supposed to watch it. But they clapped after every scene and stayed back to tell me who was their favourite character. That was heartwarming,” recounts Ellias.
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Solo act
She worked on her voice modulation and body language to essay the eight diverse characters on stage. It’s easy to presume that it must have been tough for her but she reveals that the performance came naturally to her. “You need to follow a certain discipline when you are performing solo onstage. An original music score has been composed for the play and I love the way the script has been written by Sneh Sapru. In this case, the music and text are my partners onstage, they are like my co-performers. I had to direct very little as the words and the music told me what to do,” says the movement director and filmmaker.
Childhood influences
Ellias, who has worked as an actor in Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and performed with various theatre companies in Mumbai, says being exposed to the performing arts at an early age, she has a keen eye for design. Her father, a photographer and filmmaker and her mother, a poet and publisher, would take her to watch plays, movies and music concerts. “As a child, when I watched the famous musical Cats and a kathakali adaptation of King Lear, I was overwhelmed. All those works influenced me deeply and helped m e hone my aesthetic skills.” While her first production, Charge, used pop art and psychedelic colours to depict the theme of virtual reality, The Elephant in The Room is influenced by Japanese art.
Ellias is now keen to direct a play in Hindi or Marathi. “I would like to explore the tragic and epic genre and am looking for a strong Indian classical text. I also want to stage The Elephant in the Room abroad and present it in Hindi after a year.”
The Elephant In The Room will be staged today at 12 p.m., 4 p .m and 9 p.m. at Prithvi Theatre