The curtain of darkness...waiting for an idea

As we are all aware that the curtain plays a significant role in any play. It separates the play from the audience. It increases interest in the play and asks to wait for some time. It gives time for the backstage people to make set arrangements and do other detailing on stage

Opening the curtain initiates the journey of a play, and the fall of the curtain ends it or puts a pause in the story.

There is another curtain of darkness, which is between the playwright and the script. This curtain exists in the period when the playwright has not yet found a focus or do not have any idea about the subject of the play. This curtain divides play from the performers. Sometimes they can visualize something interesting; sometimes they are not. This hide and seek goes on for a long time.

Period of confusion

This particular period is difficult. No one knows how to proceed further with the rehearsals.

Children start asking,” which play are we going to do?”. Even parents think that it is a waste of time to carry on rehearsals without any proper script in hand. This time is a testing time for the leader or the director. People may think about taking a readymade script which is already performed by some other team in the past.  

After doing theatre for thirty years with this participative method even I find it difficult in these days. Before getting the idea to focus on, It is always better to tell yourself to keep patience. To keep on trying subjects that children come up with. To go on discussing with them on various issues, they come across. They bring many stories with them.

The Idea

The idea serves as a seed. If given proper attention, it grows into a big tree of a play. It can be a particular experience or a thought or an imagination.

When many people willing to create a play come together regularly and discuss and think about the upcoming artwork, a lot many things happen. They tell their personal experiences to each other.

 To hear and appreciate what another person wants to say is essential. Not to disturb the flow of narration is the technique one should learn. Children take some time to come up with the right words, but it should not be the reason to stop them in the middle of something they want to share with you. Some ideas do come up, and a group should discuss thoroughly. Some plans are valued unanimously, and They are there to undergo a trial. 

How can one know or identify a play-worthy idea?

Any idea having enormous scope for acting, visuals, music, compelling characters, and an exciting story connected very much with the life of the children should go in the list of `play -worthy ideas.'

As such, any new idea can be a play-worthy idea. You need to make your roads. The only necessity is, to be honest with your subject.

The motivation to think

Getting children together to discuss a topic is what I do. In this video, we show how engaged they can be when facilitating a discussion. 

(Here I am just explaining to them that the new ideas can be simple and on very trivial subjects and anyone can have those. For example, a person who made eatable spoons with different flavors.  He made the spoons which you can use to eat something and finally eat the spoons too. Students were surprised to hear this. Stories of many discoveries are helping to build confidence many times. )

                                     https://vimeo.com/338284820

Video is CC-BY-NC-ND, Rajendra Chavan.
Since we have children in the video, we elected to use a password. Please insert "theatre_chavan."

Ideas from children

If you are keen enough, you do not need to search anywhere else. Children give you ideas.

Many of my plays had their origin in stories told by children in memory hours of our rehearsals.

I try to sit quietly and listen carefully to what they narrate. The evening hours of rehearsals are so creative, and every child contributes something significant from his/her tiny little past.

Examples:

1. Kailas came for the first time to participate in a play that year. He was only five. We were having a serious discussion about the beliefs like ghosts and all. Someone was telling the ghost story heard by him from his grandfather someday. He made it a frightening one. Kailas with fear in his eyes came near me and sat very close to me. I came to know his condition in a minute, and I took over the discussion further and explained to everyone that these are not at all true stories, and someone creates them just for entertainment. We talked a lot that day. I told them many other stories, which were disproving the ghosts.

I told them about people working throughout their lifetime to save people from such false concepts. I said to them how I visit patients at remote places at midnight and never have any fear. Darkness makes you doubtful, and all doubts disappear if you have a torch with you. 

We constructed play on this subject.

     2. I asked why a particular child did not come for rehearsals for that week.

           His father did not allow him to participate in a play,

           though the child did request his father many times.

We did a play on this story. We had a story telling how nice the feeling is of doing a play and create a different world altogether. And when the audience saw the little child being getting deprived of this joy, the audience cried.

      3. There is a craze of cricket in India.

           I found that on days of international cricket matches, children cannot concentrate on studies.

           They don’t do their essential duties. They either see cricket or play cricket.

           Days pass by, and they play cricket.

That was the theme we explored and underlined the importance of time.

      4. When I came to know that the children are so busy in their schedule

           they hardly have time to look at the sky or stars.

           I asked many children in many schools whether

           Had they seen a moonrise on the full moon day?  

           The answer always was negative.

           On the next full moon day,

           I took them to the lake in the east, and we saw a moonrise.

           It was a big surprise for them.

           Children were seeing it for the first time.

           The moon was rising in the east, and there was the setting sun in the west.

           Both at the same time. The silver coin and the gold medal in the west.

We did a play on this concept.

We underlined there the concept of a healthy teacher-student relationship.

       5. A student read a poem about books.

             We liked the poem and explored the book as a subject.

             We thought of personalizing a book. Book will have a human face.

             The shirt of that character will have a unique design symbolic of a  book.

             The importance of books, books as friends, books in a library,

             Neglecting books, old books and new books, torn books, book with lost pages.

We did a play on a community known as `katkaree.’

They are the people who still earn their livelihood from hunting and gathering. Recently the government introduced them to education for the first time in their history. They came to know about the book for the first time. The great magic of a word power amazed them. The book surprised them. Those full, surprised eyes were the theme of a play.

Some other examples to find an idea:

Develop a divergent set of a topic for the play  

As We said before the topic we choose for the play will depend on what the children perform in their improvisations. They have various thoughts which they think are essential for exploration. Here we will know about the books they read, stories they are familiar to. We will also understand how they imagine or visualize a  particular theme. We have to give them some time and peace to discuss among them.

Some categories and examples we will discuss briefly here:

There is a story about an old lady going to meet her only daughter. The only way to go there is through a jungle. She finds it difficult as she meets all animals like tiger, wolf, fox etc.on the way one after the other. They are about to kill her as they are hungry. She requests them all that eating her now is of no use as she is only bone and very thin. She tells them that she will eat at her daughter’s house and gain some weight and if they eat her while coming from there they will be benefited. As decided she returns but hides her in a big pumpkin and cheats every animal.

2. Fantasy world: impossible happenings, unbelievable characters and sets too.

I remember a script where we had shown friendship of a mango tree and a crow. They discuss many things around. Take an interest in each other’s well being. The crow getting angry about the way people treat trees was an important part of the script.

Tigers on a calender talk to each other and take interest in life of the people in that house. Know more about how humans study,go to school and learn about the world. This really entertained children. 

3. Toys and inanimate objects behaving like humans and creating stories

A pencil and an eraser are friends. As they stay in the same box they often get a chance to talk. They both are worried about the way their owner neglects study. He does not pay attention to the teacher and gets scolded by his father. The pencil and the eraser decide to help him. The way they did it was the rest of the story.

4. Myths and Legends

Children like to play famous characters either they already know or come to know in the process from others. I remember our scripts in which we thought about the life of Saint Dnyaneshwar, Jyotiba Phule, King Shivaji, King Ram, Krishna, etc.

5. Real life stories

They can present their own stories and events. I remember here presenting the city of Mumbai on stage. We had done a script about the hard-working daughter of an iron-smith. 

Another script in which there is a wound on the leg of a boy [Proper care is not taken]. The script was for creating awareness about sepsis, infection and wound care. It was also For the promotion of the scientific approach in life.

6. Contemporary issues

They can pick up an issue from the day to day news and make a script out of it adding their views. This may not be a serious drama only, they can have a comedy too. Environmental, school and home issues, stress in relations, identity as a person, science stories and so on.

The play which we have put forward for discussion is from this category: A Landscape.

A Landscape poster, CC-BY-NC-ND, Rajendra Chavan

It is interesting how this particular topic we developed at that time for a play. I will discuss that in detail.

Many things happened together which made this topic about

`the present worrisome status of life of birds’ get converted to the play.

A bird, red-vented bulbul built a nest at a place where we used to do rehearsals. We watched them every day. Then we started to feed them sometimes. This friendship created a particular interest for students in a bird’s life.

My mother and my grandmother too used to sing a song about `calling sparrows closer and asking them to dance and eat. We, the students, and me together we used to sing that song in rehearsals. That song was ready before the script, or instead, that was the cause for the script. How close people in the past were to nature! The song has emotions suggesting love and bonding between man and nature.

A student described how birds get poisoned by insecticides sprayed on mango trees. He had seen a dead paradise flycatcher below a mango tree.