AHA! International Theatre Festival for Children 2017

All of us, at some point or another, have encountered a play. A curtain goes up to reveal a stage and a group of people pretending to be someone else start telling other people stories which seem to move back and forth in time. The play is just the tip of the iceberg. What is it about pretending and telling stories which is so fascinating? With this workshop,  you to step beyond the curtain and explore for yourself what goes into making what we see on stage. We invite you to play games with us, to pretend with us, to imagine with us. We invite you to see for you how a simple act of the imagination can transform the everyday into the extraordinary, and how it can teach us about ourselves and the world. Come, let us play…

Day 2: July 11, 2017

About the Play:

” Baavo Avyo Baavo”  is a play about three children: a brother-sister and a neighbourhood child from a not-so-affluent and culturally-backward family.

It focuses on the ability of a child to communicate and bond with another, regardless of all the class, culture and religion- the barriers created by  “adults”. It is all about unconditional friendship, forgiveness, sibling love and rivalry, parent-child relationship, told in a humorous way. The play is about children and their world, their fantasies, ambitions, doubts and anxieties…… The children do not become friends at the first sight, but surely a friendship develops which the elders fail to understand. . It also demystifies the myth of Bavo, or the Bogeyman

It talks about Chicoo and Munni children of a single middle-class mother, a teacher by profession and their friendship with Dhamo, a boy from a different background. The bond between the children develops so much that Chicoo and Munni even let Dhamo into their space, their room as their dearest friend.

The play takes inspiration from the original German play MAX UND MILI by Volker Ludvig.

Language: Gujarati

Duration: 70 min

Age Group: 6 to 8 years

Written and Directed by Surendranath

First time in Gujarati, after 600 successful performances in Kannada.

Theatre For Children:

Child Is The Father Of Man…..As we invest in our children, so shall we reap as a nation with a citizenry that will be responsible and sentient. Exposing children to good art is known to bear results that go a long way.

World over, we talk of child being the future of man and yet when we need to equip our children with a multi layered understanding of the modern global citizen, we fail miserably. We teach them through rote what they either goggle or have no use for. Instead, this festival aims to make learning fun through a medium that is perfect for them, and yet lies underutilized…..THEATRE.

Ranga Shankara’s AHA! has always prided itself on being one of the few children theatre moments that stays far away from fantasy and fairy-tales. The productions developed for the children are always based in their own reality, focusing more on responsibility and independence rather than on moralistic and didactic themes. The idea has always been to allow theatre to help children express themselves better and ready them for the realities of the world outside.

Grips, started in 1980s in Berlin, is a theatre style, an acting technique where a grown up acts the role of a child, of whatever age may be. It almost immediately started a revolution of sorts all across the world. So much so more and more theatre companies started adopting this technique. The content of Grips plays is also carefully chosen. Grips plays always support the children, explore their world, argue with the elders, and question them there by finding answers themselves.

About the Writer:

Surendranath,  the writer and director of the play, is a graduate from National School of Drama and the Artistic Director of Rang Shankara. He has worked in Grips Theatre Berlin and  with Wolfgang Kolnedar.  He has written and directed more than 20 plays, both for children and grown-ups.

Sukesh Arora: worked in advertising, moonlighted with Theatre Action Group, took a longish break teaching kids in Uganda, headed to England on a Charles Wallace Fellowship and studied physical theatre at Royal Holloway College, London. He founded Yellowcat Theatre in 2005, prior to which he was director of The Imago TIE Company. He was nominated in 2012 for The International Visitors Leadership programme by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural affairs. Sukhesh is a member of the core team that founded the National School Drama’s Theatre Educators Training Programme in Tripura, the first programme of its kind in India. In addition to making theatre, leading workshops, teaching and running Yellowcat, Sukhesh is interested in arts education and helped draft the drama and theatre syllabi for NCERT. He is visiting faculty for the Elementary Education Department at Delhi University. He has been working with Theatre in Education for the last 15 years.

Arundhati Nag: A multilingual actress of repute and the Managing Trustee and Artistic Advisor of The sanket Trust that manages the Ranga Shankara theatre in Bengaluru, comes with enormous knowledge of building and running a theatre space like Ranga Shankara.