CHENNAI: If nobody's told you yet, the 'eighth' book in the Harry Potter series is a play. But if you thought this was the first dramatic telling from Hogwarts — perhaps you're suffering from a spell of amnesia.
The debut show of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child is set 19 years after what you read in the seventh book by JK Rowling. But get this, nine years ago, a bunch of school goers from Chennai staged a musical version of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone. For the benefit of non-Potterheads, this was the very first book in the franchise.
Interestingly enough, the boy who played Harry for these performances was a 13-year-old named Harsha from Vidya Mandir!
Taking a trip down memory lane with director Aruna Ganesh Ram, here's a 'portkey' back in time to June, 2007. That's wizard speak for an enchanted object that can instantly transport you to any given destination. In this case, your newspaper:
There's a 40 member cast. Fourteen sold out shows. And believe it or not a quidditch match on the ceiling!
But first, how in a world with no wizards, did a bunch of 20-somethings from Chennai manage to get JK Rowling to okay this?
My friend Manasi Subramaniam wrote to her literary agency in the UK. And it took about two months of emails back in forth. But in the end, they said yes. There was one condition though — the proceeds needed to go to charity, and that's exactly what we did.
Do you remember the moment that the idea for a Harry Potter play came up?
(Laughs) Yes, quite clearly. Landing Stage, our then youth-run theatre group had just finished a production of Aladdin and The Magic Lamp. And we were just sitting around having a chat about what next... when somebody said 'Harry Potter!' At the time, we all laughed and dismissed it. But then we got the green signal and things got pretty crazy from there...
Chinmaya Heritage Centre into Hogwarts. How did you pull that off?
We created massive sets, different levels, curtains, projections, huge cuboids.. Painted on four sides.. That created various Hogwarts locations, from the great hall to diagon alley..
For our wants, we got local artists involved. And remember that final chess scene? We had the lights guy actually 'project' the grids of each square to make it as large as it was in the film.
What was the most challenging scene in your play?
The quidditch match! We went back and forth on how to create the illusion of brooms flying and we kept reaching a dead end. Eventually, we decided to create a different illusion - one where the audience has to look up, instead of straight ahead.
So we hired an animator to create a 2D video of silhouettes playing quidditch and projected it on the ceiling of the hall. So in the end, a lot of necks were craned which is what we wanted. (Smiles)
Would you do it all over again, now that the latest book is actually a script?
Why not? I'd probably also try and make it immersive theatre.