Adults over-analyse, kids imagine

We’ve been hearing great reviews from our closest neighbours on the coast, praising this play and calling it one of the best productions for children this year — and now Perch finally brings Jujubee to Bangalore.

After several failed attempts at trying to get in touch with Rajiv Krishnan, the director, we finally manage to get hold of him for a few minutes on the phone, a day before the play premieres in the city.

“This play is exciting. I’ve never directed a play for children before and so it was quite a challenge. The only thing I knew I had to keep in mind, was not to assume we knew what children liked. We gave it our best shot and after the first performance, we’ve constantly been revamping the play, based on how the children in the audience connected with it,” opens Rajiv Krishnan.

Perch, a theatre company now famous in the city, has quite the loyal audience and so when they decided to bring a children’s play in, the first question we needed to ask was — do you think it will work? “Why not? We didn’t think about it. We had a great script and three very committed actors. Once we knew we could also throw in some puppetry and mask-charades — the enthusiasm only got stronger. We’ve worked on the play and loved it. We really wanted it to get onto the stage as soon as possible and so we decided to learn our mistakes from each performance we do. I think we did the right thing,” answers Rajiv.

So, how does one keep the attention span of a young child, we ask? “It’s quite simple actually — try and think like a child. We tried to keep away most of the dialogue, so much so, there’s narration only thrice in the whole play and twice it is accompanied by song. Adults over-analyse, kids imagine — and that’s where the pure joy of doing a children’s play lies. They’re open to great stories and are willing to see even the unobvious,” Rajiv explains.

To conclude our quick conversation we finally ask the most important question. What is the play about? “The play is in Tanglish (Tamil + English), but can be understood by any audience and deals with the tale of a kingdom of rules, an evil king and an unlikely heroine in a story filled with action, colourful masks, larger-than-life puppets, music and dance. The play is refreshing to say the least, is really short and I’d say the play would equally engage an adult as much as it would a child,” concludes Rajiv and we finally let him get back to his rehearsal.