Going bananas

In the age of the smartphone, where attention spans are like that of a goldfish, it's hard to get a child to watch a cartoon on TV, let alone sit through a play on stage. And yet, director Shaili Sathyu, the chief architect of plays for toddlers and children in the city, manages to engage her young audience each time. With her latest children's production, Captain Coconut and the Case of the Missing Bananas, a number mystery based on a book by Anushka Ravishankar, she also makes them co-creators.

The plot revolves around ace detective Captain Coconut - believed to be a genius who can solve any mystery, large or small. "But the truth is that he is very forgetful and takes his time to figure things out," says Sathyu. The story veers into the ridiculous, when Captain Coconut gets a call by a woman, who is hysterical after she has misplaced the bananas in her house. "The fact that a detective is hired to search for lost bananas, makes it an idiotic and endearing story at the same time," says Sathyu, who has made minor tweaks to Ravishankar's original work. "There is a lot of calculation and number game through the play. And since the kids in the audience are definitely better at maths than the detective, they help him solve the case."

The play was first performed in Kannada last year, as part of Gillo On The Go, a travelling theatre project led by Sathyu, to make theatre accessible to children in remote areas. "We performed it in areas, where families grew bananas. So the audience there saw it in a different light. It was interesting," recalls Sathyu. After receiving an overwhelming response, Sathyu and team decided to stage it in English. "It's a story that excited me; we want to share the same excitement with everyone else."

WHEN: May 21 and 22, 4 PM & 7 PM
WHERE: Prithvi Theatre 20 Janki Kutir, Juhu Church Road, Juhu
ENTRY: Rs 250

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