Playing with wool

In the city of Mumbai, where innovations and possibilities on the stage of theatre often reach a new dimension, it’s no surprise that calendars are perennially buzzing with exceptionally unique theatre events. Adding one such production to the marvel list are Choiti Ghosh and Sananda Mukhopadhyaya whose play Oool not only includes Choiti to be on the stage with just a ball of wool but is also aimed  for children between the ages of two to six.

Under the mentorship of Barbara Kolling, a German theatre director who specialises in theatre for infants and toddlers, Choiti and Sananda learned a unique style of theatre called Material Theatre that makes human beings secondary to the chosen material on the stage. Choiti, who runs an object theatre company Tram Arts Trust, enlightens, “Materials are the predecessors of objects. Objects are made out of materials. It’s the kind of theatre that decentres human beings from the centre of the universe.” Hence, using the material of choice, the actors on the stage just become the enablers of the images that the material can create. Additionally, it breaks downs the traditional storytelling format. “It doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and end in the traditional sense, and so the conflicts, resolutions, and propositions are presented very differently,” Choiti informs.

Directed by Sananda and performed by Choiti, Oool is where a ball of wool finds a centre stage. In all its complexities and simplicities, wool is a material that is cultivated, extracted, and processed for the consumption of human beings. It also happens to be an exciting aid for Choiti to make images on the stage.

“It really starts with one ball of wool and a web of wool, because wool is very wonderful for denoting lines, connections and joining the dots. I just create visual imagery for the children and so you can actually call it sort of mise-en-scene – a series of images. Apart from the material itself, there isn’t any coherent line that follows the visual narrative. It is a very different kind of dramaturgy,” she reveals about the production that has gone to multiple cities within a year of its inception.

But what really sets the play apart is the preferred age group of its audience. In its 25 minutes of the performance time, Oool finds a dedicated audience in toddlers and their parents. Explaining why material theatre works well with the children, she says, “Unlike the adult brains, babies don’t necessarily need a coherent line to follow, they are very comfortable with abstractions. They are very good at building associations, interpreting images and receiving through senses rather than only through cognition.”

Hence, the goal of the performance in Oool and other Material Theatre plays is not for the children to understand the performance but rather to perceive and receive on their own accord. “It sort of appeals to, of course, your sight, sense of touch, sense of sounds and silences, but more than anything, it appeals to the images that are being created in front of you and translating those images into the images that are getting created inside your brain. It leaves things at a very delicate subliminal level, which is what the sensorial performances are meant to do,” she adds.

Furthermore, she presents a unique observation that unlike the plays for the adults where warm-up before the performance requires energising, conversely a session of meditation becomes imperative for her before going on-stage. Although for the kind of audience that most auditoriums won’t even allow, Choiti absolutely debunks the myth that children can’t stay still for more than five minutes. However, she notices that the toddlers in the younger bracket react differently to the older ones. “Sometimes they have the impulse to get up, sort of wiggle in their seats and sit down again. I think it’s a stimulus and you can’t predict how that stimulus manifests but they are reacting to a stimulus that came from the play,” she concludes.

The play will be performed at Harkat Studios on March 10.