All for peace

Seven kids save the future in The Mighty Mirembayanna & The Prisoners Of Peace, Thespo’s first production for children

This summer, kids get a chance to learn something new and save the world at large in a futuristic play in Thespo’s first production for children, The Mighty Mirembayanna & The Prisoners Of Peace. The year is 2122 and the war has struck mayhem in the world, but the only thing that is keeping people safe in the land of Bragi is the The Mighty Mirembayanna tree. Things start going awry when the tree starts dying and the government is adopting desperate measures to maintain peace in the country. How the kids save the tree, maintain peace in Bragi and keep war at bay forms the crux of the play.

Written by Akash Mohimen and directed by Abhishek Saha, the play is the culmination of a four-week workshop, Dramabaazi, organised by Thespo, a youth theatre initiative. It opened on June 1 at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai. This is the first time Thespo has undertaken an activity for the under-15 age-group.
Quasar Padamsee, the brainchild behind Thespo, says, “Thespo has always been about nurturing new talent. The process of introducing and sharing the magical world of live performance with the kids was a great opportunity. We were apprehensive at first, but our real heroes turned out to be the children. This full scale production has been driven by them, with guidance from Abhishek, who is brilliant at getting the kids to open up and discover themselves.”

The biggest challenge that Abhishek and his team faced initially was to zero in on a script for the play. They read a lot of scripts, independent stories, dabbled with the idea of merging two-three stories and transforming it into a play, but nothing was working right. Finally, they decided to come up with an original concept.

“I had done a 20-minute play for schoolkids in Ahmedabad some time ago. After I narrated the story to the team, everyone liked it. Akash was roped in to flesh out the idea and turn it into a full-fledged play. Though he started writing it with that project in mind, The Mighty Mirembayanna & The Prisoners Of Peace is very different from the initial idea,” says Abhishek with a smile.

Akash, who has earlier written scripts for short films, was penning a play for the first time. He attended the workshop for a few days to understand how kids think and to get a better idea about their vocabulary. “Today, kids have a higher intellectual capacity than what we had as children. They are exposed to different types of media and a lot of fantasy like the Harry Potter and Twilight series. So I had to understand how they think and would react to a particular situation.”

After Akash got an insight into their psyche and personality, he got down to writing the play. “I wrote the play from the point of view of a 15-year-old. I went back to my childhood days and thought about my fantasies and the various social themes that excited me. It was also challenging as writing for a play is different compared to a short film. A play is more dialogue-heavy and you have to tell the story through each character,” he adds.

After the script was ready, it was time to select the kids and train them accordingly. According to Abhishek, 12 kids attended the workshop and finally seven were selected since they were free at that time. “The youngest member is nine years while the oldest member is 16 years. It was interesting as well as challenging to condition their minds and make them think like their characters. I also insisted that they learn the dialogues because it is difficult to perform as long as they are holding the script,” explains Abhishek.

Apart from these processes, the director also ensured that his assistants, who also play supporting roles in the play, mentored the children. “This was done primarily because theatre is a group activity. It was important that a bond is formed within the group. Two kids were assigned to each adult so that they could discuss their apprehensions and seek proper guidance from their mentors,” elaborates Abhishek.
The writer and director are happy with the final outcome and are glad to entertain the kids at large. As Abhishek says, “The underlying theme of the play is how kids come up with a solution for the most difficult problems through their innocence.”