BANGALORE: As the electronic media found its way into young hearts, story books and the conventional edu-tainment took a back seat. The children’s theatre festival organised by Indianstage at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore was designed to expose children to new forms of edu-tainment that goes beyond the class room and playground.Eight thousand students participated in the festival. Part of the festivities were the plays A special bond 1 and A special bond 2 based on stories by one of the most popular children’s favourite author Ruskin Bond. The plays were enacted by a Mumbai-based theatre group, Akvarious. The group that specialises in children’s theatre is spearheaded by Akarsh Khurana son of Akash Khurana (actor).The idea of directing and staging children’s plays materialised in Akarsh Khurana’s mind almost four years ago. “It was in the year 2007 that I had decided that I would like to do plays for kids. While we were looking out for children’s stories, something with rock solid principles, we zeroed in on Ruskin Bond. His stories fit the bill. They were Indian stories with a flavour of Western sensibilities,” says the director. After reading up on Bond, the director and his team short listed special stories for the play, each comprising of seven to eight short stories woven together. “We wanted to stay as loyal to the plot as possible. However, we did give it a contemporary tinge. The kids who were familiar with Bond’s style of writing enjoyed the play as they saw the stories (that they read) unfold before their eyes. While those who were not accustomed to his work, wanted to read his books after watching the play,” informs Khurana.He further adds that unlike directing plays for adults, staging plays for children is a tad bit more of a challenge. “Kids have a very low attention span. Keeping their eagerness burning is a tough task,” he opines. However he is quick to add that though tedious, it is also a lot of fun. The team has been staging the play for the last five years and that span of time has resulted in a close knit family. “Every time we stage the play, there is some level of improvisation that is done,” he adds. The play was staged in simple yet humble setting. According to Khurana, the reason for which was to highlight the simplicity of the stories and outline the rudimentary concepts that Bond weaves effortlessly in his work.Speaking of the plans in the pipeline, Khurana seems content with the series at the moment. However, he does not negate the idea of working on new and different story ideas. “We will work around new stories and play with ideas in the future. At the moment we have just opened The Interview that won four Mahindra excellence awards in the theatre awards of which one of them was for the best play. Next on the cards is a play called Baghdad Wedding by Hassan Abdulrazzak,” he says.
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