Death of a home and how it affects children. This is the central theme and story of the theatre production Bye-Bye By-pass of Roshan Mathew and team.
The drama centres around the personal experience of Roshan — one of the “most important stories” in his life. How a development project took away the ancestral home where he and his cousins spent much of their summer vacations.
“We have been seeing many children losing their homes the past one and half years. Be it in Wayanad or Palestine... So I felt this story that I have can be told at this time,” explains Roshan.
The story originated with a small thread, losing a beloved home — Athimootil House, where three generations etched out their lives.
Now, the house is about to be demolished for a new Bpass Road. The drama unfolds through the eyes of four children who witness the house’s demise.
And it developed into a full-fledged tale after the team got together and started discussing the screenplay, Roshan says.
Ultimately, the play that deals with the grappling subject of the loss of a home, is created as a comedy, with children taking centre-stage. A walk down memory lane to the summer vacations of yore, with laughter, quarrels, a little bit of tears and a whole lot of fun. Along with Roshan, Francis Thomas and Shruthi Ramachandran join as writers.
The cast is also exciting — Aswathy Manoharan, Darshana Rajendran, Sanjay Menon, Salmanul Farris, Anoop Mohandas, Syamaprakash M S, Vaishak Shankar, Santhy Balachandran, Devaki Bhaagi and Nilja K Baby.
With Arun Varghese in music, Sreejith Jeevan as costume designer and Rajeev Ravi in lighting, Bye-Bye By-pass will have its first performance on February 28 in Fort Kochi. The team will continue the performance on March 1 and 2 also.
“Our plan is to travel and perform the play across the state, beginning from Kochi,” adds Roshan.
The story, he says, now belongs to all, as everyone has been instrumental in the formation of the script, in the spontaneous making of the dialogues, and the impro method the team used during rehearsals.
“In this play, we haven’t done the method of taking things from paper and putting them onto the stage. Rather, we give prompts to the actors about each scene and they will construct it together. They will work on it till the scene becomes almost perfect, along with the setting of it. And then we finalise it,” Roshan explains the process that began in the early November of 2024.
Now, after almost four months of rehearsals, the team will enter the stage on Friday.
“The one good thing about a play is we get instant results,” laughs Darshana. “We can use the feedback and the energy of the audience to make it better the next day. And that’s our plan — this play will evolve through these times, after each performance through the years.”
And that’s the beauty of theatre, smiles Roshan. Every performance can be different, better.
This is one of the aspects that excites the team, in which many are new to the world of theatre. Santhi, Farris and Nilja are some of the new entrants to the theatre space.
“The four months of rehearsals have made us into a family, a good fun group of friends. It has been one of the most interesting experiences in our lives. This feels like we are back in school, where every day we are learning new things, and also playing with our friends,” Santhi smiles.
This childhood innocence also is part of the stage and props, which together will create a coherent image.
“Children live in a rich world of imagination. We plan to use it in our stage too. There are hints as to what each prop stands for,. A child’s imagination is such that a stone or a leaf becomes something else altogether in their games. It’s the same principle here,” he says. However, one thing he wants to assert is that this play is going to be fun, especially since the story develops from the children’s point of view.
“It deals with a serious subject but in an entertaining way. And we find that that’s the best way to send a message,” the actor-director signs off.