Now and then after our annual elocution contest, which was always my baby, the school principal would make noises for a few days about staging a drama, and my heart would sink.

Somehow I always imagined that the entire load would be upon my shoulders, though the experience of participating in such productions in my high school days should have taught me that cooperation is the name of the game, that many hands make light work. Mind you, apart from the time when the school’s amazing music department staged a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s light opera called Trial by Jury, we put up our own dramas, with our teachers ready to advise us if the need arose.

So this was an entirely different equation from producing dramas as teachers, where in the words of English dramatist Ben Johnson, “The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give/For we that live to please, must please to live.”

This was particularly so in my time as performing arts specialist at a certain elite school, where everybody was so nervous about “taking the rap” if the higher-ups were not pleased. Actually the regional director of this institute, himself an actor, with an administration background, was not particularly hard to please and gave us every possible assistance when it came to the actual production, getting a studio to record all the music (which we had gathered from various sources) at uniform volume, employing professional set designers, giving us carte blanche with regard to costumes, and so on, and equally generous with advice if needed. So there we experienced sterling quality cooperation, as long as we didn’t actually cross him.

But the sympathetic cooperation of the school or branch principal is essential. It can either make or break both the show and the heart of the producer, though one must bear in mind that the principal has many responsibilities, not least of these being the maintaining of satisfactory academic prowess, plus the fear that drama participation will lessen the concerned students’ chances of doing well in studies — a fear that has been proven groundless over and over again.

The policy in many schools is to involve as many children as possible, since children benefit in so many ways from participation in such ventures — in terms of mental development, artistic development, interaction skills, learning to accept disappointments and so on — and to have proper back-up from a reasonable number of teachers.

However, this back-up must begin sufficiently far ahead of the performance to give these teachers a chance to know what they are supposed to do. Never shall I forget the time when, with only one colleague to help me right up until the dress rehearsal, I was producing a play with the usual songs, dance, background music and so on as embellishments.

On the day of the actual show, the backstage teachers “hadn’t an idea in the creation of cats”, as the saying goes, concerning their responsibilities, let alone any idea of what the play was about! Result — utter chaos. I fled in tears from the auditorium to be scooped up by the aforementioned gallant regional director, who looked very thoughtful when put into the picture.

But what to do when warm-hearted cooperation is counter productive? A week before the performance of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, one of the school principals ordered Hermoine to say “Haadi” instead of “Harry”. Mon dieu! I took the girl aside, and told her, “If you say ‘Haadi’, I’ll kill you!” So “Harry” it was, and that was the end of the matter.

Then more recently, during rehearsals of Dick Whittington at a foreign school I demonstrated suitably erect posture to the boy playing Whittington’s wealthy employer (in real life this man was the 14th-Century Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn), since he had come slouching onto the stage with head down. To some extent such posture in certain oriental cultures expresses modesty. Oh boy! So a colleague “clarified” the matter by explaining that the boy had to swagger in haughtily; and to preserve this teacher’s dignity, we watched silently whenever the boy marched in like a new army recruit.

It’s amazing what emerges from a little research into folktales like Dick Whittington. The historical Richard Whittington was actually not three, but four times Lord Mayor of London, between 1397 and 1419, and was in fact so rich that he used to lend large sums of money to Henry IV and Henry V. He married Lord Fitzwaryn’s daughter Alice, and when he died, his money was left to charity. The story of a poor boy making his fortune with the help of a cat is found in many cultures, and Dick Whittington adapts very well to dramatisation.

Furthermore, unlike Cindrella, as it’s so often called here, it has not been done to death. I once asked our regional director to put a 10-year ban on Cinderella in all forms, as there are so many other fairytales to choose from. Grimms’ Fairytales alone number at least 97, and most of them teach a moral lesson. Also, it is quite easy to bump up the number of characters while producing these and other tales as dramas. In the case of the abovementioned Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the cast numbered 40 completely inexperienced actors, and what’s more, there was a lot in both plot and dialogues that hadn’t appeared in the book, for example simplified and somewhat garbled techniques from fourth dimension consciousness.

Imagine how much time was spent teaching these youngsters (a) not to speak with their backs to the audience and (b) not to mask other actors. These two points always require much attention.

This play was a good lesson in faith, in that at the dress rehearsal everything possible went wrong despite the presence of teachers at in-school rehearsals for some time beforehand. The producer (read yours truly) was screaming and shouting non-stop, and at one stage took a whole extra tablet of blood pressure control medicine in one gulp, fleeing from the auditorium like a thing possessed the moment that the rehearsal concluded.

The school had been invited to view the proceedings, which is not at all a good idea. Far better to re-enact the production at school after the actual show is over. Apart from the extremely late arrival of the chief guest, the evening performance was an absolute dream, and this is where faith comes in. You must believe that this dream will come true at the appropriate moment, regardless of all indications to the contrary. Then sit back and enjoy the final show.

Alice in Wonderland was the title of last year’s annual English drama at Karachi Japanese School, where the medium of instruction is largely Japanese. Here again, adaptations had to be made in order to present each child on stage with an achievable task.

As there were a lot of juniors to accommodate, they were presented as a rather charming ensemble in a simple song and dance, based on the nursery rhyme, “Ring-a-Ring of Roses”, while their spoken lines were kept to a minimum and taken from beginners’ conversation.

One tries to give each member of the cast a role that he/she will enjoy, but with the special regard for seniority in Japanese culture, one’s attempts to do so may be foiled. Two to three years ago, for our widely and wildly adapted performance of Edward Lear’s nonsense poem, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat”, the main role of Owl was given to the most senior girl, who also had the required skill on the guitar, while the next most senior girl was to be Pussy Cat. Rehearsals were to start after the Christmas holidays. But when we returned to school — sapristi! — Pussy Cat and her mother had suddenly returned to Japan for good!

So the most senior boy had to take over the female role of the cat, to be serenaded by the Owl, and to wear a bridal veil at their wedding. This he did with fairly good grace, though the following year when drama time was approaching, he exclaimed, “I don’t want to be a pussy cat! I don’t want to be a bride!” No indeed. He landed the role of Whittington, which he performed with alacrity.

The matter of costumes looms large. Some schools are famous for the elaborate and expensive looking costumes in their annual productions. In others such as Karachi Japanese School, the absolute minimum is spent on dressing the cast, regardless of the parents’ income bracket, maximum use being made of what clothes the children already have, and for the boys the good old shalwar kamiz may carry the day.

Of course both sides are likely to benefit from the costumiers’ trip to the Lighthouse area, though tailors can make a pretty penny from the production of costumes for specific groups within the cast. On the other hand, as actor Rahat Kazmi once assured me, even scenes from Shakespeare may be staged in mufti ... Then there are those who believe that, “You can hide a lot of bad acting behind good costumes. You can’t! Beware, the truth will come out.

Questions of diction, expression, pause, vocal quality, audibility, posture and stage actions naturally require constant attention, along with special problems. For example, what to do when the best would-be actress has a pronounced lisp? She may promise to cut the habit, but under stress it will most likely rear its ugly head. Many elite private school children, due to over-confidence are 100pc lacking in clarity. This is partly due to their unnecessarily fast delivery, and lack of attention to consonants. And most of us are ignorant of the rule that the first and last letter of every word should be pronounced strongly.

Poor audibility is very likely due not only to low self esteem, but also to shallow breathing, and speaking on the tail end of the breath. It is mandatory in all kinds of vocal performance to keep an air reservoir of one third of lung capacity between taking actual breaths.

Stage fright — funnily enough I’ve never noticed this amongst child actors. Does it come later in one’s career? In any case, I can guarantee from personal experience that the example of Sir Laurence Olivier, the 20th century’s foremost Shakespearean actor, is an effective stage fright deterrent.

Olivier suffered so badly from stage fright that his fellows actually had to push him onto the stage, after which he relaxed and enjoyed his role. We can also learn from him in the matter of presence of mind, as on one occasion he blanked out completely during Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, and simply sat down on stage till he remembered what followed.

Producing a play is like building a house. How can anything good emerge from the mess that at first confronts us? But finally we may be amazed at the edifice before our eyes.

The writer is a student of Tibetan Buddhism, and lives in Karachi.