The endless wait

It took Sanyal four months to adapt and conceptualise the play. He admits that initially he was a little unnerved by the task at hand. He says,I had a mind-block and was scared how should I approach the play. But my cast and I did a lot of readings,interpreted it differently and had repeated discussions. Quiz him what prompted him to change the name to Two Blind Mice and Sanyal says,It was Sanjna Kapoors Director,Prithvi Theatre idea. She suggested that since we were staging it for kids,we should have a simple title.

Also,rather than roping in children,the actor decided to have adults play 10-year-olds as he hadnt worked with kids earlier. He says nonchalantly,I have done a small workshop with children but I havent worked with them extensively. If I had decided to have them in the play as lead characters,then it would have taken me 14 months to put up the production. Sanyal followed the Grips Theatre format,a well-known theatre form for children and youth,wherein the entire acting process is simplified and actors have to imbibe the traits of kids and act like them.

Abhishek Saha,who plays Estragon,explains,Kids have a limited attention span and constantly shift focus. I observed them and tried to walk and respond like them. It was quiet strenuous to bring the energy of a 10-year-old in the play. It involved a lot of physicality. We had to constantly move,exaggerate our actions and change dialogues to signify the shift in thoughts of the characters.

Saha,who has also directed plays and worked with children,brought his own experiences to the table. He says,I have worked with Chandan since one and a half years now. I dont give much inputs as an actor but understand that as a director,Chandan gives me some generic guidelines and later its up to me to modify and implement them as per my abilities.

While it was quite a tough task for the lead character to master their act as kids,it was a challenge for Dhruv Lohumi too to play the aspirational character of Lucky. Lohumi says,Lucky is the only character in the play who understands what is going on. But when he speaks his mind,he scares the other characters who in turn beat him and then shut him up. I couldnt move as a normal human being in the production. I had to constantly glide,cart wheel and in short,do abstract movements. Lohumi,a practicing martial arts expert,who has also studied physical theatre,looked up videos on silent plays on YouTube to observe the actors body language.

While Waiting For Godot is termed as an Existentialist play,Sanyal has tried to simplify it by changing the protagonists into children,having a set that represents a chess-board with actors donning school-uniforms in black and white shades and driving home a message. He says,Waiting For Godot is a classic. I was intrigued by its basic theme about how all of us in this world are waiting for something. It operates on various levels emotional,absurdist and religious. But we simplified it to give out a positive message that everyone should always speak their minds and think for themselves just like the character Lucky in the play. Lucky was an intellectual who was shut up by the world. In that case,hes similar to personalities like Isaac Newton,Oscar Wilde and Albert Einstein who were scoffed at initially before the world understood their contributions. The whole emphasis is on freedom of expression that is important for all individuals.

Lohumi couldnt agree more. He adds,We always do what we are told to do. Very few people think for themselves. The underlying message is that one should think for himself,have his own opinion and take independent decisions.

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