Kinder theatre

A puppet performance by Margrit Gysin, a German play with live music and a kathakali performance are part of this year’s AHA! children’s theatre festival.

Children in Bangalore will soon get a chance to see international theatre productions, courtesy Ranga Shankara’s International Theatre Festival for Children. This year’s edition, to be held between July 9 and 17, will see troupes from Germany, Switzerland and Korea sharing the stage with traditional artistes from India.

The theatre festival is part of AHA!, Ranga Shankara’s five-year-old Theatre for Children programme, and will open with Lavanasuravadham, a 90-minute kathakali performance in which Leela Samson plays Sita and kathakali doyen Sadanam Balakrishnan, Hanuman. There will also be a koodiyattam performance on Krishna by Kapila Venu, a young artiste (Koodiyattam is a 2,000-year old Indian art form, declared a world heritage by UNESCO). The international acts include a puppet performance for children 3 years and above by the grande dame of Europe’s puppeteers, Margrit Gysin; an Indo-Korean co-production for those aged 6 years and above; and a German production with live music and visual art for children 4 years and above. There will also be film screenings for the young audience. For two of the plays, Troi and Mimmi and Brumm are having a Party, children will even be encouraged to sit on the stage, while their parents will have to remain in the gallery.

“AHA! Those are all the emotions that theatre brings to us, whether as an audience or as performers. Ranga Shankara has touched the lives of over 100,000 children so far,” says Arundhati Nag, creative director of Ranga Shankara. “AHA! believes in giving children theatre that is as professional and complex as theatre for adults — there are no compromises on quality, no talking down, no cutting corners.”

Through producing carefully chosen plays and through workshops, Ranga Shankara believes it is laying the foundation for a theatre movement among younger people — ensuring that the future of theatre in Bangalore and in the country has trained talent to complement enthusiasm.

This festival will also see the launch of a story-telling programme “The Little Cloud” with four story-tellers from India and abroad. The initiative will return with a regular schedule subsequently.

In 2006, the first year of the Theatre for Children initiative, a ten-day workshop led by Vibhavari Deshpande of Pune (assisted by Padmavati Rao) culminated in the GRIPS theatre-style production Gumma Banda Gumma. Based on the German Max und Mili, this play revealed how children can play together without prejudice until adults come along and make them aware of differences. Ranga Shankara also brought a play from Germany for children the same year, following it up with another the next year. These plays were the first in long-term collaboration with various other international partners and cultural agencies.

Ranga Shankara’s plan for every year includes at least 50 shows that will reach over 22,000 children in schools from across the city and outside, the aim being to give children the theatre that they want, with their concerns, their hopes and ambitions.“For Ranga Shankara, AHA! is on top of our agenda.

Continuous activity for children in the form of plays, workshops (for both children and teachers), international theatre and puppetry fests, outreach programmes, and exchange programmes have been planned under AHA!,” says Nag.