THE STORY TELLER - Isabel S.R. Vas

THE STORY TELLER 

photo credit: Arun PJ.

You will normally find the actors seated on little chairs and benches in some empty classroom normally occupied by Kindergarten students as their eyes lay intensely fixed upon a figure. She moves like the wind and every move spells an emotion. At the moment she is indulging in a monologue; or telling a tale, creating a cloud of imagination in the minds of her theatre friends. They are wrapped in curiosity as she slowly walks them through the suspense and then suddenly she reads a line that makes the room burst up in laughter. 

The joke is as infectious as her smile and the little spark of humour picks up force, accelerating into a laugh riot. The actors seem to have lost their focus. “Ladies, Gentlemen and all other species!” she exclaims; trying to capture their attention. Disciplined to that voice, the laughter ceases and they regroup to stay with her till she concludes the tale. So vivid is her skill of narrating, so intimate her gift of empathizing that by the time she has finished walking the listeners through the script, every prospective member of the cast and crew of the Mustard Seeds has already lived the play in their minds.