Wallingford author Bharti Kirchner is lending her knowledge of India and its culture to the Seattle Public Theater's youth program this spring. She is serving as dramaturg and assistant to director Carmel Baird and the child actors, age 9 through 13, with the play "Marco Polo and the Prince of Timur."A native of India, Kirchner has written four novels and four Indian cookbooks. She has won local awards for her writing, including Seattle Arts Commission grants. Seattle Weekly named her first novel, "Shiva Dancing," to its list of the top 18 books by Seattle authors in the last 25 years, according to her website. Because of her experience with Indian culture she was asked to help with this children's play.FAMILIAR TERRITORYThe production is an adventure story that follows Marco Polo's travels through China and India and the court of Kublai Khan. It takes place in 13th-century Asia, a time when women were more subdued and people were more formal. Kirchner helps the children understand the culture of that time and shows them how the characters they are playing would have acted. Kirchner helped Baird, the director, choose the actors and, during rehearsals, helps the children understand how people during this time treated each other. "For me, it's a kind of familiar territory, and I can tell how a person would act," Kirchner said.Baird said because Kirchner is so knowledgeable about different cultures, it is easy for her to translate the course of Marco Polo's travels from Venice to China and India. The children - most of whom have performed in prior productions - are excited about the play because of the level of dedication Kirchner has brought into the production process, Baird said. She added that she enjoys watching Kirchner work with the children. "They tickle her funny bone. When they forget a line and start to ad-lib she gets a kick out of it," Baird said.A BACKGROUND SOURCEThis is Kirchner's first time working in theater. She said she wanted to be involved in children's theater because she was working on a children's novel in which kids are putting on a play. Kirchner said she wanted to see kids rehearsing and preparing for a play so she asked her friend Shana Bestock, artistic director for Seattle Public Theater, if she could come watch one. Bestock, who is assistant directing this play, told Kirchner she should help out with a production."I asked her to be a source for the kids in the background," Bestock said. "What Bharti offers to the world, in terms of her artistry, is a good compassion and multiplicity of nationality." Bestock said the Seattle Public Theater, 7312 W. Green Lake Drive N., has never had a children's author directly involved in a play before. Sometimes it is common to have an author help out with a script or something small if the play is based on their book, she said; this is unique because Kirchner hasn't written a book about Marco Polo.Having an author working with her on a play has brought more perspective, Baird said. While Baird is working on smaller details, she said, it's helpful to have Kirchner by her side because she sees the piece as a whole."There's a similarity in that there's characters, a story, a beginning and an end. She comes from one medium, and it translates to another," Baird said.Kirchner said she enjoys working in theater and hopes to do more theater work in the future. "I hope I'll be able to keep it up.... I'm in the storytelling business so it makes sense," she said. "I find that I kind of naturally want to do both [writing and directing]. I wish that my novels could be performed like this. It would make me a better writer." "Marco Polo and the Prince of Timur" plays Friday, May 2, through Sunday, May 4.[[In-content Ad]]
