Gillo Repertory Theatre works in Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA), creating Performing Arts experiences that engage children and young adults with Theatre in particular, and the Arts in general. The presentation will be about “Gillo On The Go!”, an initiative of the Gillo Repertory Theatre, to tour Theatre for children, with the particular aim of making Theatre accessible to those children living in smaller towns and in rural areas of India. The presentation will include information about how this project was conceptualised, how the programme design developed organically, and the community participation and support we received. It will also examine the sustainability of the programme and the transformations that the project has successfully achieved for audiences, for artists, for the local community, and for the TYA sector in India. - For many children in India, the opportunity to watch a play is rare due to several reasons. This includes remoteness, difficulty of access, issues of language, and simply the absence of performances reaching the places where many children live. The project ‘Gillo On the Go!’ was launched in 2017, with the objective of taking performances for children to such places. Gillo was inspired to launch this initiative by several legendary travelling Theatre troupes, who even today perform across entire states on three to six month tours. However, these groups do not offer performances specifically for children. The presentation will showcase the work of this three year project, a relatively small period of time but nonetheless one in which which Gillo’s Natak Bus (Theatre Bus) has covered over 7500 km, performed 94 shows, and reached audiences of 10,000 children and adults. The project has been supported hugely by local community organisations and individual / institutional donors which demonstrated the great desire and need for such an initiative. Gillo On The Go! has led to several outcomes, both planned and un-planned: an evolution of our own artistic practice, the presentation of TYA for the very first time in some locales, the launching of longer-term TYA initiatives in others, and a recognition and appreciation of TYA in the lives of children wherever the Natak Bus visited. As the project evolves further, the plan is to tour two states every year, and to visit each state (or circuit) for at least three years in a row, before moving ahead to a new area. In the third year that the project operates in a particular state, we shift the focus of the programme from presenting performances for children to training local artists in Theatre-making so as to enable that community to take up TYA initiatives of their own. In this manner, not only do we hope to plant and nurture a theatre-watching culture for the children in the places that we perform but we also aim to try and expand our reach to children from all across India. Gillo’s Theatre Bus introduces TYA to children outside of the big cities and then gradually helps those communities to be a part of the larger TYA network in India, both in the role as audiences and of creators of TYA.

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