November 24, 2007

Arts for Campus

Theatreperson Pralayan is just back from a month-long residence in Hosur.
Back from working with school children on a Thamizh play and helping them discover and debate many issues.
Pralayan, who lives in Besant Nagar and runs his street theatre group, writes scripts and works on films ( he has worked on Kamal Hasan's 'Dasavatharam') often works with school children.
On invitation though.
In Hosur, he was working with a school run by the TVS group.On invitation because Pralayan isn't keen to stage slapstick shows for Annual Days and end-of-year celebrations.
He steps in only when a host encourages its senior students to get involved in a play, respond to it, debate issues, expand the production and gain some thing more than curtain call applause.
Not long ago, Pralayan also worked with the girl students at Avvai Home in Adyar.
And he is open to invitations.
I have known of a few other schools who make use of the talent of creative people of the neighbourhood to work with their students.
The School-KFI in Adyar hosts a unique drama fest every year. It invites a few schools to work on original scripts and focus on themes that bother / affect / appeal to young students.The plays are staged and dialogues follow.
Since the plays are held on campus, only a limited number of people get to see them.
Perhaps, neighbourhood schools could draw on the talent, resource and time of creative people who reside in the area to enrich their extra-curricular programmes.
If schools are already doing this, I'd like to hear from them . . .
Meanwhile, Pralayan wants to make this known - he can convince the TVS School in Hosur to let their students' theatre team stage their new production in our city if somebody can sponsor travel, accommodation and theatre space.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice blog. Good work. I was googling Adyar Times when I stumbled across your blog. God orientation for people new to Chennai.

Vincent D' Souza said...

Thanks for the warm words.

Adyar Times, Mylapore Times and Arcot Road Times, Chennai's most respected neighbourhood newspapers, will have their own web sites up in early 2008.

And they will be different from the weeklies.

Patience please!

Anonymous said...

I am concerned about the 'kalakshetra model colony' project.A mega meeting was held at the Besantnagar community hall a few weeks ago which was attended by Corpn. commisioner Lakhoni and Ms.Sheela rani Chunkat where they announced that Kalakshetra colony was selected for the project.
To initiate the project few of us bought the "Khamba" demonstrated by Ms.Navneeth Ragahvan .
That was the last that we heard about the project.

I am shocked to read in the 9th Nov Adyar times issue that the project has started the second phase of planning.A meeting was being organised on a working day somewhere in the city when it should be organised in Kalakshetra colony and housewives & servant maids should be part of the training programme to create an awareness about the project.

Neel metal Fanalca continues to mix up all the segregated garbage in their trucks.
Unless corporation has a joint meeting in the colony with residents, maid servants & Neel metal workers this project will never take off.

-Kamla Ravikumar