The Case of the Vanishing Firefish
Palo Alto Jan 2020
Produced and Presented by: EnActe Arts
Based on the book Ayesha and the Firefish by: Ajay Chowdhury
Adapted by: Vinita Sud Belani and Raashina Humayun
Written By:
Vinita Sud Belani, Parker Downey, Sameer Gauri, Vineet Gupta, Anika Jayaram, Zoya Khare, Amytza Maskati, Vivaan Mudgil, Inika Mukherjee, Vijay M. Rajan, Uma Ramesh, Uma Sakhalkar, Varin Sikka, Sanjana Taware

Director: Vinita Sud Belani
Assistant Director: Raashina Humayun
Music Composer: Randy Armstrong
Costumes: Namita Vakil Jaggia and Raashina Humayun
Makeup and Hair: Jeshka Yurash and Caitlyn Slavich
Sets and Props: Keya Chatterjee and Suruchi Chandorkar
Choreography: Maria Basile
Veksler Academy Performance VIP Team Instructor: Laura Graham-Marquad
Projections: David Murakami
Lighting Design: Meghna Singhai
Stage Manager: Michael Ramirez
Lyricist: Angelina Melwani
Artwork: Catalina Willis and Sukanya Sarkar
A climate change fable for our times! If the bioluminescent phytoplankton (aka firefish) keep disappearing, life as we know it on the planet will be destroyed! Ten-year-old Ayesha has courage, intelligence, creativity, and a complete lack of caution. Even so, the mission that Shekina, Queen of the Seas, has charged her with may be slightly out of her league! Surrounded by cryptic clues involving Galileo, Gaudi’s Casa Batllo, Stephen Hawking’s theories and the science of wormholes, Ayesha undertakes a perilous quest across the world with naught but a snarky surfboarding snail as a sidekick!
Cast:
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