Coming To Grips

The Prithvi Theatre Childrens Festival held in Mumbai recently was well attended. There were groups performing from Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Pune and Berlin, in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi and English. Served with such rich cultural entertainment, the kids and their parents didnt waste a moment lapping it all up.

What we know as childrens theatre in India can be traced back to the GRIPS form of theatre that was a huge success in Germany. It was theatre veteran Mohan Agashe who brought the form here some ten years ago. It began with a small workshop in Pune conducted by visiting GRIPS functionaries. Dr Agashe enunciates that GRIPS is German word which means a quick grasp of a situation or coming to grips with a challenging situation. This theatre has its root in the 1968 students uprising in Germany when they performed sarcastic political plays to get their message across to the masses. But the students very soon began to see themselves as the most oppressed section of society and their target audience shifted to children.

 

That was in those halcyon days when tales for children conjured up the beautiful but impossible fairy tale world of demons, goblins and angels. GRIPS changed all that. Mundane issues began to dominate the stage.

Parents, siblings, policemen, teachers such was the stuff that made for the newly-evolving childrens theatre. A lot of humour and music relieved the productions of tedium. As Volker Ludwig, director of GRIPS theatre in Germany and one of the founders of the movement has said, If a play achieves catharsis through crying, with the tears fly away your emotions. On the other hand, if you laugh, your emotions stay with you. It makes you think.

Adults enact GRIPS plays evoking the mannerisms, dialogues, action and excitement normally associated with children. The attempt of the actors is to try and speak to children in the language that they best understand.

A sampling of the themes enacted at the Prithvi theatre festival suggests the general tone and tenor of GRIPS theatre. There was Mein Bhi Superman, a play in Hindi, which sought to discover the world of handicapped children. Of the brother-sister duo, the former is handicapped and confined to a wheelchair. The two make friends with another little boy who is initially unsympathetic and unable to empathise with the tribulations of the handicapped boy. The play comes full circle when the healthy boy meets with an accident and is bound to a wheelchair.

The play is interspersed with many a funny moment. It is also interactive in that it allows for active audience participation, allowing children to take up a chorus or chant numbers through a countdown.

The reception to the play seemed promising. Young Hitesh thought for a

moment before giving his very serious assessment of the play: I liked the play because it made me understand that handicapped people are normal after all! Television host Siddharth Kak felt that the play had served its purpose judging by the enormous positive interaction it had managed to evoke amongst the children.

Those on stage seem to enjoy these plays just as much too. Jayoti Basu, the GRIPS proponent from Calcutta, had this to say: I feel completely unmasked when I perform in front of children because they are honest about their reactions. By doing childrens theatre, I am also able to communicate to the adults in their role as parents. This eventually will help in changing the lives of children, who I believe are really oppressed in modern society. Jayoti Basus Sutrapat troupe from Calcutta put up two well-received Bengali plays at the festival, Care Kori Na and Robot Kupokat at the festival.

GRIPS theatre relies very minimally on stage props and sets. Simple and spartan seem to be the operating words. German actor Thomas Ahren exhibited this wonderfully in his Als Pal, the English play he had brought for the festival. In this one-man show he had children in splits from the word go. He made a worm of his index finger and started a ventriloquist-kind of show speaking in two voices, one for himself and one for the worm. The worm was soon dressed up in a suit and hat. It then took on the keyboards, which it played expertly while also singing and laughing and crying. Thomas had the audience spellbound. The worm exited with a very formal bow. So enthralled were the kids that they went and shook hands with the worm after the show.

The play that won maximum accolades was undoubtedly the Marathi play Pan Amhala Khelaichay put up by the talented Theatre Academy of Pune. Written and directed by Srirang Godbole, this original script tackled a very contemporary and serious topic riots and communal disharmony. The GRIPS technique ensured that even this serious topic had its fair share of laughter too. Actor Mohan Gokhale, sitting with the audiences for a change, shook his cleanshaven head in admiration. Volker Ludwig was all praise for the performance: It was straight to the point. It had strong music, strong feelings, it was completely original.

Pan Amhala Khelaichay traces the life of two families, one Muslim and the other Hindu. The children from both families go to a very cosmopolitan English medium school. The kids have a whale of a time at school till riots break out in the city. All the killing and mayhem leave the children insecure and unsure of their position. All ends well with the kids protesting the parents attempts to take the children from the minority community to different schools and the parents relenting.

As Mohan Agashe clarifies: Ours is not a propagandist form of theatre.

Our messages are subtle and they are smuggled into the play and always go with humour and music. This tries to ensure that our message makes the children think about real life issues.

Prithvi theatres Sanjna Kapoors gumption ensures the right ambience for childrens efforts. The attraction this time was a music corner where the kids could freely play a host of musical instruments.

Then there was a puppet show by Rajasthani artists. And on the concluding day of the festival, the kids got to celebrate Diwali plenty of impromptu music and dance with the Prithvi team. The star of the show was comedian Ravi Baswani. And the curtains never seemed to come down.