The second edition of DASTAK Chhota Packet – a children’s theatre festival brings to us ‘Earthward Ho’ – A play that addresses animal cruelty. The show will be aired on Colors TV Asia Pacific on Saturday, 26th Dec 2020 at 10am. It will be the first time that a Hindi children’s play production, shot in Singapore, is being premiered on an Asia Pacific-wide channel.
Curated by Shalaka Ranadive and Directed by Deepika Rajani, the play focuses on promoting kindness and preventing cruelty to animals.
“This play is our humble attempt towards educating children and adults to create a community where all animals are treated with kindness and respect.” says Deepika Rajani who is the Director of Earthward Ho. Deepika is a theatre practitioner and a certified Speech & Drama trainer.
Earthward Ho is produced by Wecandoit under the banner of Dastak Chhota Packet. The production house is founded by Shalaka Ranadive who is a curator and Artistic Director of Earthward Ho.
“Inspite of this being a challenging year, it has been a wonderful journey and we managed to hit a big milestone by bringing this production to the audiences beyond Singapore. Determination of the team and dedication of our 19 young actors (children in the age group of 7 – 13 years) who were trained through online and on-site training workshops from March 2020 to November 2020 made this possible” says Deepika.
Talking about her association with Dastak Deepika says, “I have been associated with Dastak for four years and Dastak Chhota Packet since it’s inception two years ago. After our great hit last year with all three shows sold out this is my second year as Director for Dastak Chhota Packet. I thoroughly enjoy working with Dastak as Shalaka Ranadive is a true visionary and believes in empowering her team.”
Scripted by Sunita Lad Bhamray, Earthward Ho is a Hindi musical with underlying theme of ‘Animal Kindness’ which calls out to the younger generation to take care of the nature, our environment and encourage co-existence. The play has three original soundtracks composed by Ireland based music composer, Akshay Avdhani who has also composed the ‘DASTAK’ theme music and performed live for all ‘Nukkad’ (Dastak street performances) shows too. The songs have been written by Singapore based lyricists Tanuj Khosla and Aditya Majumdar, sung by 11 young children from age group 8-13 years from ‘Tat tvam Asi’ a local music group in Singapore run by Lavanya Sampath. The third soundtrack is a beautiful dance movement piece choreographed by Lorena Zepeda. In all, it’s a complete entertainment package for children and adults alike and is a must watch this Christmas weekend.
News by Vishal
