In which the children perform

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about my experiences trying to teach drama to kids on weekends. I believe I also mentioned writing a script in a matter of hours for them to perform. I’m also quite certain that I talked about doing *nothing* but build props and costumes for a couple weeks. Well, one stage of that journey is complete. Today, they kids performed.

I powered through adapting Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Butterfly That Stamped’ (which is a charming little story if you haven’t read it) into a fairly respectable script. Four main cast (played by four of my favourite kids), plus a bunch extra tiny parts (more or less non-speaking). Oh, and two narrators, who desperately tried to make excuses to never learn their lines. The nice thing about this play is all of the characters get to wear nice costumes, which always makes actors happy.

Most of the costumes were fancy dress clothes that the kids already owned. The sort of thing you wear to weddings, but are so nice you wish you had more opportunity to wear them. I had to construct the butterfly wings, which turned out to be more trouble than I thought. The on-site welder built me some very complex frames and I stretched and hand-stitched sparkly fabric over them, covering the mess of stitches with sparkly ribbon. It took me an eternity to do this. They looked pretty good in the end.

The setting for the play was the King’s garden which was made out of green streamers and an endless amount of tissue paper flowers that I got the kids to make when they had nothing else to do. Considering that the entire design was more or less tissue paper, it looked really nice. On the back wall, I drew and painted a rather striking and elaborate golden palace. When the Djinns had to make it disappear, they pulled a black cloth in front of it. It’s cheesy, but that’s what I liked about it.

None of these kids are stellar actors (although one of the narrators had a good sense of the text), but they spoke loudly and vaguely remembered where to stand. Miraculously, the audience got the jokes and seemed to enjoy themselves. Then again, parents are good like that.

The other play that was performed was one that Ansu wrote called ‘Train to Darjeeling’. Which is pretty much what it sounds like but with singing. For some reason, this play needed much more rehearsal than the other one, probably because of the singing and the fact that it involved every single kid in the class. For this show, I built a massive train by covering a perambulator with painted cardboard and painting more cardboard sheets to be worn as compartments. I kind of hated how cheap it looked, but I didn’t have the time (or any help) to make it look better. I also painted a railway station sign, which looked fantastic for some reason. Oh, and built cardboard razor blades.

Miraculously, that play came together for the performance. It came off quite nicely.

I didn’t actually see the plays as they were being performed. I was backstage, wrangling children. Helping them change costumes. Making sure they didn’t peak out onto the stage. Keeping them quiet backstage. Not fun, but it was necessary. After the plays, I was onstage handing candy to the children as they were introduced to the audience. Then *I* was introduced to the audience. Apprentice from Canada… blah blah blah… built a bunch of stuff for the plays… blah blah blah… Studying theatre here… blah blah blah. That was kind of strange.

I went out for dinner with the Akshara family afterwards at the Habitat Centre, which was nice. I’m still confused by what India calls feta cheese. It’s nothing like feta cheese.