Can Stories Change the Way We See the World? | Unscripted with Akarsh Khurana

Unscripted with Akarsh Khurana

In this episode of Unscripted with Akarsh Khurana, playwright Ramu Ravanathan, artistic director Shaili Satyu, actor-director Trishala Patel, and comedy

Key takeaways

• Ramu Ravanathan explains that Germany's GRIPS theatre movement emerged post-WWII to confront collective amnesia about Nazism by replacing fairy tales with contemporary, question-driven plays for children.
• Shaili Satyu founded the children's theatre group Gilllo in 2007 and stresses that ticketed shows alone cannot sustain TYA; creators must build long-term institutional partnerships with schools across government, private, and NGO sectors.

Main topics

• Theatre for young audiences (TYA) history and philosophy
• Funding challenges and sustainable production models

Notable quotes

"Theatre for young audiences doesn't invent that instinct. It meets it, it shapes it and hands it back a little bit more confident."

Conclusion

The episode underscores that children's theatre requires both artistic rigor

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) As we talk of children's theatre, there is an attempt to Speaker 4 (0:02) dumbify. Speaker 1 (0:03) How seriously do we take children and young people? Shows in what is happening in the country today. Speaker 4 (0:10) All you have is more experience. They come up with that adhut factor. They Speaker 2 (0:14) give me a new madness every time, which is why I get inspired to do more things. The Speaker 5 (0:19) biggest challenge of doing theatre for young audiences. Too Speaker 1 (0:22) much about... Wanting to send children to... No, no, we don't want to act. We don't want to make our children actors. Speaker 4 (0:28) Running the production is very difficult. Speaker 1 (0:31) I don't even get Speaker 2 (0:31) a stage where I share with people who know about children's theatre, frankly. Just Speaker 5 (0:35) a little bit from all of you about what we can do better. Speaker 2 (0:38) I think this is a win. This is a win. Speaker 5 (0:40) This is a win? I've never Speaker 2 (0:41) done a podcast on children's theatre. Speaker 5 (0:43) High five, Speaker 2 (0:44) bro. This is a win. Speaker 5 (0:57) Hello and welcome to the fifth episode of the third season of Unscripted with Akarsh Khurana and Adyam podcast. So long before a child ever steps into a theatre, they've already been telling stories to their toys, to themselves, in the worlds that they build under a blanket fortress or across the battlefield of a living room floor. Theatre for young audiences doesn't invent that instinct. It meets it, it shapes it and hands it back a little bit more confident, a little bit more aware of what it means to feel someone else's feelings. And it is my belief, these days more than ever, that a little empathy goes a long way. Joining us today are four people who have spent years working towards this. Joy Fernandes, an actor and comedy trainer who has taken his craft from international stages into workshops with children. Correct? Speaker 3 (1:47) Yes. Speaker 5 (1:49) Ramu Ravanathan, a playwright who is best known for his fierce political theatre but has also written for some of the city's youngest audience. Shaili Satyu, the artistic director of India's foremost repertory company working exclusively in theatre for young audiences. And my friend Trishala Patel, an actor, writer, director, producer who moves fluidly between plays for children of all ages. Welcome and thank you so much for being over here. Thank you. Speaker 5 (2:15) So before we get into theatre for young audiences, I just wanted to discuss the four of you as young people, younger people, and your first memories or your first experience with the theatre. Speaker 3 (2:25) First experience I think was eons ago in Calcutta. I was born in Calcutta. Parents, theatre going mainly what we call Tansen, huge on just watching plays and listening to plays, took me to a Bengali play in Calcutta at the Ravindra Theatre. And all I recall is bawling loudly and the actor on stage telling, in Bangla, throw him out. And that was Shambhu Mitra. So, good genes. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 5 (2:56) Good and illustrious start, one could say. Nice. Shelly, as a child, what was your first encounter? Speaker 1 (3:02) I think being babysat by my father's actors while he was in rehearsal. Right. But yeah, that's one of my earliest memories. And when I was nine, I think I performed in a... Premchand's story as a play which was at the Prithvi Festival in 84. Speaker 5 (3:19) On Speaker 1 (3:20) stage that is my first memory. I was playing Dadi in Premchand's Eidgaon. Speaker 5 (3:26) So Speaker 1 (3:27) I think that's where it all started. Speaker 5 (3:30) Nice. Bossing over particularly. And Trishala, some may argue that childhood is still a part of your... existence. It Speaker 2 (3:39) is, it is. Speaker 5 (3:40) You're eternally young. But when you were younger. Speaker 2 (3:43) When I was younger. Yeah, so my first experience was, I think, when I was three years old. I played one of the Gandhiji's Three Monkeys. Speaker 5 (3:52) Which one? Speaker 2 (3:53) The one like this. Speaker 5 (3:55) And then you never did that again. I never did Speaker 2 (3:57) that again. That performance was not repeated. And my mom, for some reason, she liked putting me into these fancy dress competitions all over Bombay. So I was dressed, I was traumatized by this. So I was Krishna Bhagawan painted blue and I peed on stage. So I said, there was blue paint. It was damn good. But that was a terrible memory. But I remember going back in. She said, Speaker 2 (4:24) So I went back in and then I played the flute a little bit. I don't know what I did. But I won some runner up prize. I don't know why. There were many Krishna Bhagwans. And in school, I can't remember a year when I was never on stage. So my love started there. Speaker 5 (4:39) Apparently, my brother-in-law's first kiss was on stage with you in school. Speaker 4 (4:47) What? Yeah. Speaker 5 (4:49) Dilshad's brother, Farhad. Oh, Speaker 4 (4:50) yeah. Speaker 5 (4:51) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's so cute. He remembers Speaker 4 (4:53) it this fondly. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 2 (4:54) yeah. I remember him at Speaker 5 (4:55) that time. Speaker 1 (4:57) And I used to chase him around. I remember. Speaker 5 (4:59) Yeah, he left the country. Speaker 1 (5:02) He Speaker 5 (5:02) lives in Australia now. He went as far as he could get. Joy to the world. Speaker 4 (5:09) Yeah, for me, we came from a family that we didn't watch too much of anything. neither too many films nor it you know telly was late in any case so whatever plays that I would see sometimes when they would show the regional things on Saturday sometimes there would be televised versions of plays so that's probably when I could see a play when I was a but I was on stage from as long as I could remember Speaker 5 (5:39) Also Speaker 4 (5:39) it was my safe space because being as I said I was a rather larger person. And I was obviously, I didn't know fat shaming was a term at that time. But that was invariably my lot. So the only time the kids would let me be was when I was on stage. And I still probably work better with kids, probably because they sense my mental age is lesser than theirs. So they like that. So yeah, I am very grateful for the stage. Speaker 5 (6:13) How did you manage to make your way towards theatre for young audiences? Speaker 4 (6:19) The Grips theatre movement had... Will you Speaker 5 (6:22) just say a little bit about Grips? It Speaker 4 (6:24) was in Germany. It originated, created by two gentlemen, Volker Ludwig and Wolfgang Kolnieder. Pronunciation is bad. They may not like it. Proper nouns. Those were the two gentlemen who started it. And it came into being because they try to do plays with children and children obviously can't run the plays because they have school and other commitments. So adults stepped in. The second one which I did was Ramu's The Boy Stopped Smiling. But the first one which I had done was Mayabi Superman. I am also Superman, which was a Hindi. That was also my first Hindi play which I did, early 90s by Bhupen. And because I was not a natural Hindi speaker, so I was given the role of a watchman. And the watchman comes in the scene just before the interval. Before I would enter, there would be a buzz in the audience which I could hear in the Prithvi wings. Watchman is coming. Watchman is coming. And these little ones are waiting. And then it reached a point where I would go on stage and they would say my lines with me. Speaker 3 (7:34) Now Speaker 4 (7:35) that is something as an actor I had never experienced. Speaker 3 (7:38) Just two or three things for context because I mean sometimes we talk of children's theatre, there is an attempt to dumbify. Germany was going through a crisis at that time which was mainly that the N word, the Nazi. And there was a certain kind of... Speaker 3 (7:56) sort of collective societal amnesia about Nazism and what people like Volker Ludwigs at that point of time realized that if everybody's claimed teachers, adults, parents, neighbors, etc. that we are not, we didn't have anything to do with Hitler then how come this was such a massive movement and how come there was this kind of a genocide and this kind of hatred and at that point of time they realized that they are part of something known as a collective lie and so For that they needed to restart and there was no way that they were going to be able to start off with the previous generation of adults or young adults. So one of the things that happened and if you know all of us would remember there was something the youth movement that transpired in Paris, the various communes. So this was an offshoot that transpired primarily in the western part of Germany. There was West Germany and East Germany and the whole thing was to start with questioning. And what Folker and many other people started believing that asking questions is difficult. And the moment you start asking questions, you realize you know nothing. And so the premise of that. And therefore, as Joy mentioned, that you start taking up serious issues. So as opposed to plays about, you know, fantasies and, you know, rakshas and, you know, all those kind of fairyland kind of a thing, they started taking up real issues. Speaker 5 (9:14) Shaili, you were saying something. Speaker 1 (9:15) Yeah, so GRIPS had a particular approach where, like Ramu said, Stories were contemporary, the characters were contemporary. And what they started was called emancipatory theatre, where the audience would see characters and contexts that were like theirs. So it was mirroring their lives. So for instance, in India, if you have a play which is based on the Panchatantra, if you have a jungle book, you cannot call it grips. Speaker 5 (9:41) I think, Shelly, you've also consciously tried to do plays where you use young actors. The idea of Gillu. that when Gilloo came up and is that one of Gilloo's main features that it likes to work with younger actors? Speaker 1 (9:54) Well, in the initial five, six years, it was like that. Right. We worked with 16 to 25 year olds. Now it's mostly 22 to 45 or so. Speaker 5 (10:06) Gilloo has become quite a esteemed kind of institution for this kind of theater. So tell us a little bit about how that came about. and the thinking behind it? So the Speaker 1 (10:16) journey has been very organic actually. I got a chance to start doing workshops at Prithvi in summer time and Sanjana was the one who sort of gave that opportunity to start working with children and at that time I was with the IPTA and I was asked to direct a play for summer time and I had never done direction before. Speaker 1 (10:42) extremely frightened, literally frightened of directing. So they said, no, no, I have done so much work with children, I can play. And then I ventured into direction. I remember I had asked Ramu to write a script for me, but he refused. So then I said, okay, then let's write it ourselves. Speaker 4 (11:00) I love when we clear the air here. So Speaker 1 (11:03) I didn't want to direct, I didn't want to be a playwright, Speaker 5 (11:07) but Speaker 1 (11:07) I wanted to write stories for children, which hasn't happened, only plays have happened. So I directed my first play called Barsoram Dhadake Se which was based on a story by Kalpana Swaminathan. So when I asked her for permission she said I'll first see the rehearsal, Speaker 3 (11:28) only Speaker 1 (11:29) then you can announce the play. Speaker 3 (11:31) So I had to rehearse Speaker 1 (11:32) for three, four weeks. She came and saw the rehearsal and she said yes. So then we performed that play, that was my first play as a director. And before that I had started some work with Gilllo where I was working towards writing, publishing books and... So Gilllo Speaker 5 (11:50) existed as an entity? As Speaker 1 (11:52) an entity, yes. So Speaker 5 (11:52) when did that start? That was Speaker 1 (11:55) 2007. And Speaker 5 (11:56) you started that? Speaker 1 (11:57) Yeah, but it was all in Speaker 5 (11:58) the air, Speaker 1 (11:58) you know. There was no work actually, it was all in my head. As I started doing more and more theatre for children, realize that it requires a certain rigor and research and continuous work that it's not just one more thing that you do it is the thing that you do so now it's been 17 years and we're just going deeper and deeper into it Speaker 5 (12:19) so what are the roots of the name as Speaker 1 (12:22) the cases with anything to do with children you always want a logo or a mascot which is an animal so we looked around and most of the animals were taken and so we came upon squirrel and did some research on the squirrel and I said oh the squirrel is found everywhere in India from the hills to the you know north south east west everywhere all kinds of geography you see this palm squirrel so I said that's nice because then that will be our sort of motto also that wherever the squirrel is found we want to reach right Speaker 5 (12:55) Trishna yes why don't you tell us about your journey and your involvement with children's theatre and how that's been. Speaker 2 (13:04) Okay, children's theatre. So, Sanjana. Sanjana is the one who introduced me to children's theatre. Sanjana Kapoor will be Speaker 5 (13:09) mentioned a lot in this podcast. I also want to talk about little Prithvi players with you at some point in time. Summertime has been a huge part of all our lives. I perhaps approached in the wrong way because summertime meant date mil jaayegi. Speaker 2 (13:21) So Speaker 5 (13:21) it came from necessity. Ke date chahiye hai, toh summertime mil jaayegi. But that's why we tried that. But sorry. No, Speaker 2 (13:28) no, not at all. So yeah, Sanjana said that since you're bouncing around Prithvi and there's a... Very Speaker 5 (13:35) well put. Speaker 2 (13:36) So she said, why don't you do something for kids? And she looked at me and I looked at her and we just both started laughing because she said that you're still a kid. I said, I know. So she said, you'll have to play an adult who's playing a child. I said, I am an adult and I will play a child. So she introduced me to Ramu. Now, I did Boy Who Stopped Smiling and it was... it was absolute joy i didn't understand grips i didn't know what i was doing i just understood that this is a character which is talking to the kids it's talking directly from the heart whatever he's written is talking from the heart whatever your writing was what malhar was saying ashwini malika the parents everybody the characters they speak from the heart so for me the fact that it's grips theater or not it it didn't really make a difference actually. I feel the truth of emotion, the truth that a child is listening, repeating, and going with the flow. For me, that was very important. You connect on such a base level. For me, that speaks volumes. That actually excited me to do more children's theater, but no one offered me anything till Akarsh came along. I'm sorry. Say Speaker 5 (14:47) a little. We did Takadum Takadish. She spat at me while saying that. But can you say a little bit about Boy Who Stopped Smiling for context? Speaker 2 (14:56) Just for context, Boy Who Stopped Smiling is about a boy who will not smile unless his agenda becomes clear, which is he is always playing chess. And he is in love with chess, with the game of chess. and he runs away to play this game of chess. But actually it's saying much more. It's about a child who doesn't feel like he fits in his house is what I felt. He doesn't fit at home. And eventually we have to fit into Malhar's world rather than the other way around. And me being the neighbor who was nosy and... I don't know if you remember, Ramu, but I think I changed your character a bit. Speaker 5 (15:32) No, also, the interpretation also, he's just absorbed it. Speaker 2 (15:36) He's like, that's Speaker 5 (15:36) what Speaker 2 (15:36) the play I wrote. That's what I felt about Malhar, that we all have to fit to what Malhar wants rather than the other way around. For me, that was Boy Who Stopped Smiling. Speaker 5 (15:47) Joy, you Speaker 4 (15:47) were part of Boy Who Stopped Smiling as well. So what did it mean to you? So the play spoke, there were a lot of issues very nicely dealt with. So, yeah, and in that play. Speaker 4 (16:01) Dholakia sahab made me open the play and I never sang before that and I and I mean no pretense that wasn't singing. What did you sing? Speaker 4 (16:17) First and foremost, it started with something that he gave us, like, pum, pum, pum, pum, something like that in that genre. Some little boys are very bad. Some little boys are very good. And so on and so forth. It was something like that. Very chanting kind of thing, not singing. But for me, in my journey, big thing. Speaker 5 (16:40) When was this, Boy You Stopped Smiling? I Speaker 3 (16:43) think 1999. Is that Speaker 5 (16:46) the first thing you wrote for a younger audience? 1998. Speaker 3 (16:50)