Monkeying around with kids

IMPROMPTU GIMMICKS: Stray Factory built the audiences’ inputs into their show.

Stage lights. Dramatic pause. The actors freeze as one asks theatrically — “What has Taklu done?” Suddenly, a squeaky little voice interrupts the play. “He’s not been exercising enough,” says the pint-sized boy with a cheeky grin. The actors look startled, but just for a second. As they recover their poise, a second voice chimes in. This time from a serious little girl with pigtails, who stands up and says, in a motherly fashion, “Taklu. You just run around.”

In a heroic attempt to regain control of the play, the narrator coughs officiously, and tried to begin again. “We’re now going to tell you about the first time Taklu the Capseller met Metro the Monkey. “Oh. That’s chapter four,” squeals a five-year-old in a candy pink dress. Unnerved, the narrator checks his notes. “Um, yes…” he says, with a surprised chuckle, “It’s Chapter Four.”

Stray Factory’s recent retelling of Karadi Tales’ story ‘The Monkeys and the Cap seller’ at Alliance Francaise was charming for a number of reasons. As always, the theatre group had assembled a live-wire cast. As always, the group threw fun surprises into the mix, such as Rajiv Rajaram performing his rollicking YouTube hit — the

Everywhere Man song. Add lots of dancing, singing and some jokes that were so bad, they were almost good. (Example: Which is the biggest pan in the world? Japan.) But what made the production stand out was the way the cast managed to connect with the audience: a hall packed with chatty little children.

Children can be the most brutal critics. And this gang didn’t spare the actors — letting them know instantly every time there the action lagged. The cast’s smartest move was to cheerfully include the kids in the play, unceremoniously letting down that invisible fourth wall between the cast and the audience. So while there were the usual scripted ‘interactive’ moments, where children were asked to dance and sing, what worked best were the unscripted ones. Like the narrator changing his story about a scary tiger in the jungle, because one hyper-active boy wanted him to include a snake. “Yes. Yes. Okay. There was a snake there too, right beside the tiger.”

As for the technicalities: the story was fairly simple, and the team intelligently chose to keep it that way. It did lag in parts: One particularly world-weary munchkin turn to his mother half-way through and sighed, “Let’s go. Enough.” And there was a near-riot situation when the cast decided to give out shiny party caps to some of the children. The ‘I didn’t get one’ plaintive cries held up the play for what felt like an eternity. Especially because a couple of children decided the easiest way to get their caps would be to throw a full-blown tantrum.

Nevertheless, on the whole, the Stray Factory cast — Krishna D. Ganapathy, Kiran Naig and director Mathivanan Rajendran — did a competent job with a tough crowd; even if they were outshone occasionally by their actively-involved audience. All very nice kids, by the way, despite the occasional wailer. Also, quite a compassionate audience, as the bald character Taklu quickly learnt. As he was reciting his lines about how hard it is to have no hair, a child — in a heart-warming attempt to comfort him — ran up to the stage and said “Don’t worry. Mahatma Gandhi was bald too.”