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We can't have July go by without the Aha! International
theatre for children at Rangashankara....now can we? On its tenth year, we literally
camped at Rangashankara watching a play every day between July 14th to 20th. Thankfully,
there were a couple of plays that Abhay could watch unlike last year which was
exclusively for toddlers. However, there has been a increasing tendency favouring
the younger lot, with most plays having minimal or no language at all or
gibberish meant for very young kids, and a note of suggestion would be to include a
play or a performance with dialogues impressing upon the tweens or adolescents
too! Anyway, a play a day sure keeps dreariness away (so needed for our routine
driven lives)........also devices away (so needed for this generation) ........and
jadedness away (so needed for everyone today) ...and of course making a play a
day happen for your kids on weekday evenings sure keeps you on your toes...so much
so that it took me this long to recover from the hectic schedule of the Aha!
week.....and it's only today that I found time to write about it!
Well.......better late than never, so here is my must-post
event of the month.....and this year was all the more special as it was the tenth
edition of the Aha! International theatre festival for children that has spread
it creative tentacles to the likes of Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. With plays from children's
theatre groups from various parts of the world including the US, UK, Germany, and
Korea. etc, catering to children aged 4 and above, and performances ranging
from puppetry to adapted novellas, from shadow plays, to creative inter play of
mime and animation, from no language at all to the universal language of creativity
and imagination, the Rangashankara's Aha
festival has come to symbolise one of the most stimulating, nuanced, inclusive and
inspiringly creative events for children that Bangalore and Bangaloreans are
proud to call their own!
The Aha! festival has always
provided a platform to interesting events that prelude the play of the day, and this year it opened with a launch of a
book titled "Yaksha" by
Archana Mohan and illustrated by Adithya Sadashiv. Being a collaboration between
Bookosmia and Yakshadegula, this book is a wonderful way to introduce children
to Karnataka's indigenous dance form, Yakshagana, that is particularly popular
in our native South Kanara district. Narrated through the perspective of the eight
year old Yaksha, who finds himself
unhappy over many things, be it being new to school or his unusual name that always
gets turned into "Yucky" or "Yucks" or his lack of friends
or as he considers himself to be a back-bencher with no special talent thus
making Yaksha suffer through a low phase in his school life. On "Be
your own superhero day" at school, Yakhsa
is reluctant to participate as he is too
jaded to believe in Super heroes. But as his father and grandmother take him
through the story of his great great great great grandfather also named Yaksha
who fought to perform mythological stories before the general public, through the medium of the unique
dance-drama-art. So Yaksha, in his search of a 'super-hero" goes on to draw inspiration
from his own family tradition that he sets out to reclaim and make it into his
own. A beautiful coming of age tale that
encapsulates a melange of themes -from a
contemporary story line of a boy trying to fit in, to the past glory of a dying
tradition, guided by subtle yet strong support from family and elders to
finally finding your own destiny, all through interwoven with informative aspects of
one of most vibrant dance-drama forms of Karnataka.....truly makes you go
"Aha!" with delight!
