From the archives:Â
James Norton: One of the Backpact
(Varsity, #640, September 29, 2006)
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ONE OF THE BACKPACT James Norton on spending his summer touring a “silly” play for kids around the Indian Subcontinent
9:30 am. July 12th. The Backpact theatre company, 6 of us, are huddled around a table outside a tiny Nepali café, sipping on glasses of chai. In the school next door eighty children are waiting for us to put on the first ever production of our touring play. We’ve endured the rehearsals, the devising and the long sweaty journey from Delhi over the Himalaya to Kathmandu to be here – and yet sitting at this café, there’s a definite sense of being drastically under-prepared; totally unaware of what we’re letting ourselves in for. To add to the tension, we all have the shits (apart from Kathryn). Earlier this year the Backpact company had consisted of two penniless people with only a vague idea of what they wanted to achieve. Over May and June Backpact materialised into six people with a website, some sponsorship, and a planned route through Nepal and North India. The route we mapped out involved flying into Delhi in early July, quickly moving overland to Kathmandu, and then travelling across the west of Nepal up into the hills in north-west India. From Dehradun we would make our way through Rishikesh, Manali, Leh and finally end the tour spending three blissful days upon an old colonial houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir. Our tour routine was vigorous. Every morning we would emerge at seven, from wherever we were staying – which was usually a friendly guesthouse or on occasion one of the schools – clad in bright yellow T-shirts, brandishing one guitar, three sheets (one green, two blue) and a handful of juggling balls. All six of us would cram into a tiny taxi for the trip to the school; the coda to which short ride would usually be a heated argument about the fare with the taxi driver. It was monsoon season and sometimes the roads were too poor quality to drive on, forcing us to hitch. Six white people all wearing identical yellow clothes hitching at 7.30 in the morning certainly turned a few heads. The workshop would start with exercises and silly games to warm the kids up - and also to surreptitiously weed out the hecklers - then games, song and smaller performances from the children before we would stage our own piece; a fantastically silly play involving a girl called Lucy, a boat (conjured out of the green and blue sheets), some island adventures and a Backstreet Boys number. Before the school day began, we’d always try and have our contemplative cup of tea, a tradition established on that first anxious morning. It produced a moment of strange calm as we contemplated the stormy seven hours before us. The relentless pressure to be lively and animated was exhausting and yet the days spent in those schools were some of the most rewarding of my life.
Backpact are James Norton, Lizzie Crarer, Sam Sword, Lou Proske, Jack Gordon-Brown and Kathryn Hamilton.
