I remember the first time I went up on stage, as if it happened yesterday. I was all of three, in the first year of kindergarten and was part of an adaptation of the nursery rhymes we had learnt that year. I was, not surprisingly, playing the little teapot of the short and stout fame. Clutching a lurid cardboard cut-out, to my pre-pubescent chest, I tramped all over the makeshift stage, reciting the poem, waving merrily at my parents in the audience, mid-recital. Then there was the time where I played a duck on Old McDonald’s farm and my beak fell off. Or the time where I was Mama Bear and spent all my time on stage glaring at a dark-haired Goldilocks, who was carrying my doll and looking extremely pretty while I sweated in a furry body-suit and a supremely ugly plastic mask. I have also been Snow White’s wicked step-mother, wearing an elaborate night gown and a gilt-paper crown, conversing with a silver sheet stuck on a wall, that passed off as a mirror; the Rani of Jhansi draped in my grandmother’s dark green nine-yard saree; a rather plump Virgin Mary (cruel relatives pointed out that I did look somewhat pregnant while I essayed the role).
We have all been part of amateur productions; it is almost a rite of passage for most of us. Annual days in sweaty school auditoriums with terrible acoustics (often made worse by whirring fans or sudden howls), glass-paper- covered yellow lights, microphones that almost inevitably didn’t work or worked too well (and you heard whispers like “psst..what do I have to say, miss?”), your audience nearly always a forgiving one, composed of parents and friends.
So when I entered the Museum Theatre last week, to see an adaptation of Longfellow’s classical The Song of Hiawatha, executed by an exclusive children’s cast, I expected something along the same lines.
Not really, I soon discovered. Stunning sets, authentic costumes, excellent choreography, great background music and fairly seamless acting greeted me; sure there were lines forgotten, wardrobe malfunctions, technology glitches but it was a far cry from the thoroughly amateur productions of yore.
“I have been introducing children to various performance arts for 16 years now and I can see that the space has evolved considerably over the years. Today’s children are more discerning, better informed and open. Children’s theatre is certainly coming of age,” says Andrea Jacob, one of the artistic directors of the production. Sandhya Ruban, the other artistic director, adds, “Earlier, parents simply wanted their children to perform but today they understand that it’s not just the performance that matters but the vision of the production itself. In this production, children aren’t just acting; they are also handling back-stage and coordinating, learning the finer nuances of theatre. The take-away isn’t just the show but the learning garnered by being part of the process,” she says.
Dushyanth Gunashekar of Crea-Shakthi, a city-based theatre group that believes in making theatre a tool for education by not just teaching the craft but also integrating it with the syllabus by developing plays from textbooks, agrees.
“People are warming up to the idea of theatre-based learning. In a fast-moving world, plagued by fragmented conversation, young people are denied platforms for healthy real-time interaction. Theatre is a communion and easily the best way of bringing people together, offering them life lessons, management skills and personal growth,” he says, adding that the group trains children in the six-14 years category and also offers certifications from Trinity College, London.
International exposure certainly helps enhance the quality of theatre available for younger audiences, says Aysha Rau, founder and managing trustee of The Little Theatre, a theatre company for children. “I have been organising an International Theatre Festival for the last six years; seeing the quality offered by these international productions pushes us to create work of an equally high standard. People have become a lot more discerning and demand good work today,” she says.
And being introduced to good quality theatre as a child inevitably ensures that you become a more astute adult audience believes Andrea. “A lot of the people I worked with when they were children are now churning out great work in other spaces today. I cannot help but marvel at the transformative nature of theatre.” Adds Dushyanth, “I’m not sure how much change we do create; but I do believe that by allowing them to act out stories, we are organically facilitating their innate creativity.”
“It is also a great way to introduce them to the classics,” says Sandhya, who believes that Disney offerings available on television should not be the only stories a child garners. Talking about a recent Crea-Shakthi production, which showcased some of the best-loved stories of Ruskin Bond, Dushyant adds, “We want to expose them to stories that they can relate to easily; Bond is one of the writers who manages to do that.”
The production, that used devised theatre to bring out the lyricism of Bond’s narrative, was certainly well-received by the children in the audience and teachers who attended it. “I loved it because I really like Ruskin Bond,” says Lavkumar, 11. His teacher Sheena, who also attended the play added, “For a lot of the students, English isn’t their first language. Yet, they enjoyed the play because it has a lot of physicality in it.”
“Children are naturally attracted to drama and hyper exaggeration. Theatre is certainly a space where they can find it,” says Sandhya.
