by Sangeeta Dass
When I planned a visit to Nishtha to hold a theater workshop with the children who come to Nishtha for the after school programme I was ready with a comedy play to do with them. My last experience holding a theater workshop at Nishtha 2 years ago, was outstanding and I was now certain that I could do a bigger play with the children. The local children have such a keen interest and talent for exploring any new medium. So I designed the workshop in a way to focus on their skills and on specific aspects of theater.
But two days before I came, I got to know about Nishtha’s “Clean Green Village” project and at the same time Radhikaji, a Nishtha Trustee, called me up and offered to donate loads of trash which I could use in my art projects with the kids. I mulled on the idea of doing some recycling and redesigning projects but I still wasn’t sure how to combine the garbage segregation work, the creative work and theater to make NISHTHA’s dream project.
With only a day in hand I wrote a fun play, involving the maximum number of kids to encourage the participation of as many as possible. I incorporated the issues of Environment, Garbage segregation and other soft skills suitable for kids with the theme of animals and birds. I decided to do the play using puppets made with the trash we got. That way we could also teach the kids to recycle and reuse waste material.
When I started working with the kids, the biggest task was to train the kids to read the play. The idea was to divide the children into two teams – one group to read out the dialogues and one group to move the props. Most children wanted to do both. It was really a tough task to explain the format of the play. For the first time, they were not standing and ‘acting’ as they had done earlier, rather they had to read, clearly and loudly and with emotion.
By the first week, with Vijay’s help, I had translated the play into Hindi. By the second I started making the puppets. I had never made puppets with trash. After about 2 days of visualization and research, I came up with some easy methods to transform the trash into cute little toy animals. Ravindra helped me in making all the toys. We used TP cardboard rolls, egg-boxes, plastic balls, paper and some craft supplies and small sticks to make the puppets.
During the play rehearsals the children showed many talents as well many characteristic strengths and weaknesses. The whole process became an exercise in learning about dedication, punctuality, discipline, team work and creativity. Some children turned out to be excellent team players while some displayed exceptional leadership capabilities. Most children wanted to take up many creative roles. Many children showed amazing skills in reading, voice modulation, mimicry and emotive expression. Every child got to play at least 2 characters and in that process they learned to change their voices and expressions to suit particular characters. Some of them were versatile enough to take up 3 to 4 roles.
The play has many dialogues & metaphors related to soft-skiills which were taught subtly to the kids. Through participation in the production. Each day after the rehearsals, we had a 10-15 min discussion and dialogue on a game format on the soft-skills addressed in the play. Children were asked to point out one outstanding dialogue of the part they played and what it meant to them and how they would want to implement it in their real life. This improved their memorizing & concentration skills, public speaking and analytical skills which helped them glean the gist out of the play, for longer retention.
During the weeks of rehearsals and preparation many of the original 30 kids involved dropped out and some new ones joined in, but finally we formed a great well bonded team of 14 children, good at sharing and encouraging each other to create a better performance, and most of all, having fun. I am confident that with this team I can develop several new plays and build the NISHTHA NATAK MANDALI and go out to perform in other places.
When we are not cramming lines and rehearsing roles the team also likes to play with water, go bird watching, do creative sketching workshops and much more.
