Annual plays in school's are no more a kiddie productions

As schools across Mumbai incorporate the arts into their daily curriculum, the annual school play, too, is growing up

On any given day, four-year-olds can outperform Tony winners. They can cry on cue, when they don't want hot milk. They can chew the scenery when it's time to go to bed. They can bring the house down with their histrionics. They're natural-born performers; all they need is a little hand-holding by professionals. Recognising this, many city schools have begun grooming their students to become headliners.

In December last year, Cathedral and John Connon School in Fort staged a massive production of The Phantom of the Opera for their annual school play, with 120 actors onstage and 80 kids backstage. It had a falling chandelier and a swaying boat. Earlier this month, Jamnabai Narsee International School in Juhu put up Les Misérables with 240 students. It included rap and Adele's Skyfall. These aren't kiddie productions, created to amuse parents. Directed by theatre professionals, and enacted by budding thespians, they showcase what 16-year-olds are capable of.

Jamnabai Narsee International School put up Les Misérables this month. The performance included rap and Adele's Skyfall

"This is something that's been happening a lot around the country," says Quasar Thakore Padamsee, artistic director of QTP Productions. "Mumbai is slightly late to the party. [Earlier] it happened only in certain schools, like Dhirubhai Ambani International. But there's a much more professional attitude and approach [in the other schools today], because the arts are also part of the co-curriculum. Suddenly, the calibre of dancing and singing is very, very high. So, schools have started seeing merit in doing annual day shows that are strong."

For Tardeo's Aditya Birla World Academy, QTP had produced an original play called Tale of Eau, directed by Abhishek Saha, which was about water shortage. "Several kids ended up finding out more about water shortage, and bringing that back into the rehearsal room. That is much greater than just doing a show."

Gurleen Judge directed Les Miserables for Jamnabai. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

Theatre director Gurleen Judge, who co-directed short stories of five Nobel laureates at Shishuvan School in Matunga a few years ago, says, "We explored José Saramago, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rabrindranath Tagore, Gabriel García Márquez and Nadine Gordimer. They have amazing actors in that school because they have an interesting culture of dramatics. Theatre professionals come from outside every year for a play and it's really about the text and pushing the boundaries in terms of content. Shishuvan has taken it seriously: it's not just about making the parents happy with a Bollywood song, which is what a lot of annual days are about."

Even theatre director Amey Mehta, who co-directed Phantom for Cathedral, wouldn't have touched it, if he'd only found bathroom singers. "My instruction was clear: if we don't find kids who can hit those notes, Phantom cannot happen," he says. "Because, the magic [of the musical] is in the singing. Luckily, when we auditioned, we found all this great talent and I was shocked and amazed." Damayanti Bhattacharya, headmistress at Cathedral, says, with a touch of parental pride, "I knew the children would carry it through, but they sang so beautifully, they outdid my expectations."

Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

Part of the regular
One reason for the upsurge in sure-footed singers and actors is that many schools have adopted the International Baccalaureate (IB). "IB requires you to do creative activity as part of your studies," says Padamsee. "The arts have a central place in their academia, so a lot of the kids are either studying music or drama. Just by having that on campus, teachers and the administration start looking at it in a different way."

Jasmine Madhani, head of Jamnabai, says, "As an IB school, we have a student-centric philosophy. Our senior students are familiar with these things. They write short scenes in their drama class. The annual play is another opportunity for them to get involved with professionals and have a good-quality play."

Quasar Thakore Padamsee, artistic director of QTP Productions

The other reason is the change in attitude among school principals, IB or otherwise. "For one play I did in Greenlawns, there was a Diwali scene," says Mehta. "In the current theatre [trend], the actor becomes the prop. So, the actors became the firecrackers. We asked them to move like a phooljhadi, like a rocket bomb. So, schools don't want to do an annual day just for the sake of it; they also want kids to get something out of it. A lot has to do with the principals, who are okay with pushing boundaries. They want to push the kids, because if not now, then when?"

Padamsee recalls that when he was a kid, he would look forward to the JB Petit annual play, "because Pearl Padamsee [theatre personality] was the drama teacher, and you knew it was going to be good. I remember watching a production of The Diary of Anne Frank and marvelling at how people so young were doing it so well. In those days, JB Petit was one of the few places that had a professional theatre person on the payroll."

Bringing in professionals
When professionals take over the annual play, they do two things: they free up the drama teachers to focus on the curriculum, and bring their own aesthetic to the production. For a performance of Sindbad the Sailor for JBCN International School in Oshiwara, Judge created a promenade piece. "It was travelling theatre, so people moved from one room to another in groups of 50. We spread it across the school: one scene happened near the swimming pool, one in the lobby, and one in the auditorium."

For Les Miserables, which she also directed at Jamnabai, she tried to contextualise the setting. "How do you make a story that belongs to a different time and period relevant to this generation? At the end of the day, it's their annual day and they need to have fun instead of rattoing lines. Les Miserables talks about students rising up against monarchy, when nobody else is. It was quite easily transferable in a school environment. They need to have ownership of their content, which is why a lot of writing took place with them in the rehearsal room."

That kids take ownership of their work seems to be foremost on the minds of theatre directors and school principals alike. Judge says, "I believe children are equipped to direct and write themselves, especially the older ones, because you feel a little stupid telling 16-year-olds what to do. When I was 16, if anybody would come and direct me, I would respond with, 'Excuse me, please. Who are you?' A lot of us would actually prefer to move to a programme, which is more about mentorship, and do a directors' or a scriptwriters' workshop." Mehta concurs, "The more we did workshops with them, the more they started becoming these characters. What is nice is that Cathedral teaches kids to question. When we used to respond, they would get more clarity about their characters." The end result was so good that several people asked Mehta, "Why don't you take this to the NCPA?"

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