Theater for young audiences goes beyond the binaries

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Lounge Connections India, a collaboration between the National Theater in the UK and the NCPA, brings together students from 16 schools summary through special display windows. A young audience is introduced to a wide variety of themes without fading them in the school theater, is synonymous with the annual day -to -day productions with well -known stories and moral lessons. Programs such as Summer at Prithvi and Summer Fiesta in the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) – both in Mumbai – have long provided young audiences created for them but performed by professional actors for adults. These festivals offer the ethos of Theater for Young Audiences (Tya), an international field dedicated to high -quality creation, age -appropriate theater that respecters respect young viewers as judicious audiences. In Mumbai, while dedicated businesses such as Gillo Repertory Theater deliver thoughtful work for young audiences all year round, the theater made for children, seasonally, remains linked to summer festivals. The summer at Prithvi will take place between May 4 and June 21 for children between 4-16 years. Before the pandemic, a live season of children’s theater festivals took root, with productions catering for children and teens. This vibrancy, which was the fulfillment of the principles of Tya, has not yet fully returned. Also read: performances that you should simply record at the ‘Remember Veenapani Festival’ that pushes beyond conventions – which is existing along Tya – is connections India, now in the third edition. A collaboration between the national theater in the UK, where the program has lasted for 30 years, and the NCPA, it brings together students from 16 schools to play so much over two intense weekends. The festival was held in January earlier this year, and the festival is not just a showcase of youthful enthusiasm, it is a space where theater is considered a tool to understand the world, and a way to bridge division. “It’s not just about setting up a play – it’s about the process, the questions that arise, and the way these students start to see theater differently,” says Ragini Singh Khushwaha, who leads creative learning from the NCPA. Through such performances, a young audience is now introduced to a wide range of themes – political upheaval, intergeneration tension, inclusion – without ever simplifying it. These plays are performed by children from different walks of life with adults, making the productions more reliable. In Luke Barnes’ The Sad Club, with children with special needs, director Shivani Vakil Savant focuses on creating a safe, supportive space. ‘Working within the school environment helped. The children were incredibly resilient and looked at each other. I set up the same behavioral boundaries as for neurotypical children, and they understood it, ‘she says. Metaphors become a bridge expression – ‘I feel like a balloon’ or ‘I feel like popcorn’ – echo the themes of the play. The level of Sheena Khalid, a special command, follows a young girl who grief through a video game, and processing the loss of one level at a time. It is not only satisfied with the sign “strong female lead” – it makes her drive the story on her own conditions. It is unusual for young people to struggle with the implications of age, but at least two plays have made it head. In Tim Crouch’s super glue, artists of the Abhyudaya Nagar MPs depicted an unimportant climate activists at a memorial for a friend who was lost during a protest march. It is soon revealed that they are older than they look, and are aged by a global decline. But there is a catch. “Scripture has explicitly banned the use of conventional markers of age – no gray wigs, posture or elderly,” says director Padma Damodaran. Yet, besides the ensemble, which produces credible stoic performances, the elderly of the JJ Dharamsala -old house appear on stage in identikit costumes as the young actors, not only as a projection of the characters that can in fact look, but to serve as a quiet, if they won’t live. Also read: Lounge Loves: Gourmet Dog Food, Triple Crown Watch and more Suteep Modak take another route in the time of Abi Zakarian, who is at Kherwadi municipal school. In the play, schoolgoers who are not of the elderly find their 80-year-old self in a cute home. “They got tasks like spending time with elders, focusing on the spirit, body and voice. They have observed physical discomfort, spiritual shifts such as forgetfulness and the mix of kindness and rigor,” says Modak. The young actors certainly sink their teeth into a delicious acerbian species with a pure gusto, but outside the performance itself, the process becomes an exercise in empathy – which makes them climb into the lives of older people and can see them with fresh sensitivity. Both plays have finally put together on a shared feeling – whether by the quiet poop of super glue, where sadness is intertwined with the passage of time, or the playful disrespect of age, young artists involved with age as something tangible, immediately and deeply human. Look at the full image The schools participating come from many different backgrounds – especially ‘international’ schools and ‘NGO’ schools, there are plays that go to the past in different ways – with the history of the present to make sense. Yasmeen Khan’s Back in the Day, directed by Anitha Santhanam for Govind Nagar -LPs, takes a lighter, nostalgic route, with an enthusiastic ensemble that revised the 1980s by time traveling to investigate how the past lives in our lives. “We have adapted the play to reflect local history, from Bombay’s textile factories to the dynamics of the teacher student in India,” said Santhanam, who worked with a culturally-conscious bilingual translation by Satchit Puranik that made the steadfast messages feel more organic. She also forced her early students to work with a more abstract theater language. It took time to understand suggestive and metaphorical elements, but their improvisations became stronger over time. Santhanam was clear that the play was never treated as a ‘children’s play’. “It felt like a process centered around love – to express students, experience theater and be transformed,” she said of her experience with connections. Despite the emphasis on collaboration, festivals such as compounds do not exist outside the parallel cultures of privilege and access. While Tya practitioners have long worked to broaden audiences, theater in India occupies a rare space within the art landscape. This exclusivity is not only reflected in the composition of audiences, but also with those who are attracted to the form itself. The NCPA initiative promises the name of compound, but it is not structural division. The schools participating come from many different backgrounds – an ‘international’ schools and ‘NGO’ schools that are commonly mentioned, and at the same time use labels that only strengthen the differences in opportunities. The contrast is visible in trust, fluency and access to resources, although not in ability or creativity. According to this author’s experience, students from non-profit schools kept their own in their plays. The separation is also deeply embedded in language: Since most plays were originally written in English, translation becomes an artistic and political act. Santhanam noted that workshops in particular disrupted this division. Can this lead to deeper collaboration via Inter-schools head productions in the future? “It would be an interesting experiment. We have our assumptions, but we won’t know until we try,” says Santhanam. “The challenge would be logistical – schedules, locations, transport – but it can be valuable.” Vikram Phukan is a theater director and stage commentator. Also read: ‘Alappuzha Gymkhana’ Review: The most delicious you will keep in the cinema this year, catch all the business news, market news, news events and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Features Mint Specials