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"THE BABY ELEPHANT" GROWS,
by Nihal Kuyumcu, Tiyatro Tiyatro,
May-June 2001
"We're at the second floor of Istanbul Sanat Merkezi(Istanbul Arts
Center), in Tarlabasý. It's eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. A crowded
audience with a majority of boys aged between 8 and 10. Some adults are
also seen. And there's a girl with her parents. There are two boys of
15-16 seated next to me. They both find themselves inappropriate for watching
a play for children but also want to stay in. With a short dialogue I
learn that one of them has seen the play once before, and that it is the
third time for the other.
The troupe performs the play free for children at Tarlabasý at the weekends.
With a great attention slipping nearby the stage very much involved in
the play, sitting on the floor probably they're watching a play for the
first time in their lives. First of all, the place is ideal for a children
play. It's small, stage and the audience can easily have a relation in
between. The children might hold the tail of the Baby Elephant if they
stretch their arms to (but they don't). If only all the children plays
could have been performed in such stages...
The play is constructed on a very simple story. The Baby Elephant wants
to go far away to see new places beyond her forest and she goes. Two fairies
arrange adventures for her and show that the life is not as easy as she
thought by coming across her with different identities. The fox snatches
her ice creams, she works for the ant, dances with the cicada, sings a
lullaby for the crows and throughout all these experiences her trunk grows,
namely our baby elephant grows. Finally she misses the meal of her parents
and decides to return home. The fair issue of the play is its discourse
with no threat, advice or instruction, for example the decision of returning
home has nothing to do with a bad experience. The troupe avoiding from
the didactism declares that they aimed to reach the children "by
forming a language close to the one the child uses in his/her own world".
In other words, they succeed it by showing the children themselves.
Tiyatro Oyunevi, performs the play in a very clean and spare manner by
using very simple but functional props, masks and accessories. Using the
advantages of the small stage very well, the group starts the play with
a shadow game behind a folding screen. Then, they continue the play by
coming front and settling the simple props changing from scene to scene.
Since the place is not completely blacked out during these scene changes
and the performers make all of the transformations within the sight of
the children when there's a scene including a mask, they eliminate the
risk of children to frighten or panic.
The struggle between the fairies has set forth with a very simple and
clean acting. This play has no vulgar comical actions we frequently meet
everyday at the children plays in the name of making children laugh. The
fairies Elif Ongan and Ece Eroglu are very successfully using their bodies
and voices when transforming from one typecasting to another. Ayça Damgacý
in her typecasting of the Baby Elephant, with her glances, attitudes,
costume and make up was the perfect sympathetic "Baby Elephant".
The music and the lyrics were also advantageous in reaching the small
kids for being composed of simple refrains, and repeating of simple syllables.
Because the small kids do like the repeating sounds and repartees.
We hope to have the chance of seeing the new plays of Tiyatro Oyunevi
with same serious and painstaking manner."
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