Good Heavens! By Poile Sengupta
Puffin Books, Rs 195

Good Heavens! by Poile Sengupta, a book of one-act plays for children, feels like a theatre guide for beginners. Which is a good thing for it is meant for children above 10 years. To begin with, it teaches the ABCs of stage acting — from how to choose the right script to how to handle the stage lights. It helps that Sengupta has been a schoolteacher and hence is well acquainted with a child’s way of thinking.

What is striking about this book is its variety. The playwright has obviously given free rein to her imagination. In Good Heavens!, the first play, she personifies the “story” so that the story becomes a character. It is he (the story) who takes centrestage and narrates the events that follow.

Sengupta follows the same technique in another play, A Christmas Miracle. In Good Heavens! what appears to be a series of disconnected events eventually turn out to be strung together by a common thread, the location. She brings together everyday people — a coconut seller, a palmist and then adds a UFO, which is every child’s favourite fantasy. She avoids naming the dramatis personae so the plays are replete with characters such as “the boy” and “First Jogger”. One suspects that this is a deliberate move to leave room for imagination.

The second play, Hamsadhwani, is, as the name suggests, based on ragas. It talks of a common bane — children who are pushed into learning classical music. The reluctant learner ultimately begins to develop a fondness for music and the play is all about how the music slowly endears itself to him. Sengupta has used Indian English when she deems it necessary, and that adds to the flavour of the plays.

The White Elephant takes you back to huge cut-outs of trees and bushes that are used in school plays. Even the closing sequence, where the maharajah walks out hugging the elephant, is reminiscent of short-of-funds, high-on-spirit school dramas.

On a similar note, The Monster Night is about power cuts and shadows in the dark that resemble a monster — imaginings that most children are acquainted with. There is even a touch of the fairytale in some of the plays, like the traveller who uses a stone to make soup or the giant in A Christmas Miracle who wouldn’t let children play in his garden.

The book is a good read. And for those of you who are looking to stage a play this Teacher’s Day, there is much here to choose from.