Summer Escape

With each passing year,Summertime workshops have expanded to encompass a wide variety of activities to unleash the creativity of young Mumbaites,aged between 6-16. And as if taking a cue,the children’s plays too have started incorporating different forms of puppetry and animation. “This is what we wished for. There is a leap in imagination and you will find so many of them using puppetry in their production,” says Sanjna. She credits this trend to the regular presence of artistes like Anurupa Roy,the founder of the Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust.

In May,Roy will bring The Little Blue Planet & Kuch Un-khule Panne to Summertime. Others to dabble in puppetry are Ranga Shankara Theatre’s Zapperdockel & The Wock,Meena Naik’s Bhim & Hanuman and Aasakta’s Junglenama,based on Gulzar’s story. Jungle seems to be another favourite theme for children’s theatre with the long running Once upon a Tiger and Jungle Dhoom.com shows scheduled during this festival.

These apart,some popular stories are going to make their stage appearances. A Special Bond and A Special Bond Part 2,both based on Ruskin Bond’s stories,The Day I met the Prince (the story of The Little Prince) and Pi (based on Life of Pi) will return to the festival. The new attractions at Summertime are Ranga Shankara Theatre’s Robinson and Crusoe,Akvarious Productions’ The Adventures of Tintin and Shaili Sathyu’s Suar Chala Space Ko.

The huge crowd of parents at Prithvi Theatre on Saturday morning was proof of how keen they are on their children’s creative pursuits every summer. “What the children do at workshops may sound completely crazy,but that’s exactly what we have in mind,” says Sameera Iyengar of Prithvi Theatre. A case in point is Timira Gupta’s workshop Meet the Clowns which promises to be a fun workshop with slapstick clowning at its core. Then there is

Anshumani Rudra’s What if? The World of Speculative Fiction,Vidula Mhaiskar’s Science Toys,Roy’s Shadow Puppets and Lewis Frost’s Greek Myths among others.