August 15th, 1947. The most mesmerising and nostalgic day in our calendar. Our Independence Day! Ask any Indian what they’ll be doing today and the response will be either flying a kite or watching the parade in India Gate. On this auspicious day we pay tribute to all of the fallen soldiers who died believing in freedom without violence. I felt it was my duty to pay our troops a tribute, but in my own way. And when i say “my way” I actually mean the “Theatrical way”.

We fought for independence without raising our hands or our voices. Our actions were enough. Having already done a Physical Theatre production before I found another way around- Still Images. Influenced actually by my IGCSE drama teacher, I wanted to use still images to show how peacefully we fought for freedom. Still Images are snapshots put together to make a story. The actors hold their position for so seconds and then change into another position. Put together these images tell a story. Mine did of Independence.

The beauty in Still Images is that no one person can decide the entire timeline. Hence, making it a group effort. Thus, not only was I able to teach the kids something new in Drama but also give them the freedom to take it where they want.

Therefore, to begin I asked each of them to bring a story that they can explain in one line. Something simple yet elegant. After a couple of days we sat and did a story-sharing session out of which we all agreed to amalgamate 2 of the stories which they brought. Then we got on with the work:

On the 10th of August, Aarohan had a special prize giving ceremony where the guest of honour was the Canadian Ambassadors wife. I was asked to put together my still image performance by then and perform it on the day.

Thus, in case you missed out on the performance I have recorded it here for you all to view!

 

New Delhi became the most polluted city in the world. As an Indian and a patriotic one, I couldn’t stand doing nothing about it. Every time i would fly back to my school in England that last thing I could see of my city was a thick blanket of harmful gasses that were suffocating us Indians.

After having done a physical Theatre piece, which is a Theatre that allows us to use actions instead of words to get across our message. In it we can use mimes, movements and gestures to explore complex and social issues. I felt using this in my production would be effective as i can show what pollution does to our organs without having to give an explanation verbally. Physical Theatre, also, must come from the actors itself and the actions should be very personal to them. Hence, I could not have pre decided ideas and actions but instead I had decided upon a structure of the production.

When i returned to Aarohan for this performance, I was over whelmed by how many more students wanted to pursue Drama. Instead of 5 i had 20 people in my classroom, ready to take on this production. However, the teacher advised me to stick to 5 as the rest had exams going on. Less said the better, but i lived with it.

As we got on with our discussion the students agreed to showcase 3 things that pollution does to our body and wanted to physically do it on stage. As a teacher it was my turn to do my homework now! Not having done Biology in my life, I looked up the effects of pollution on our health and read up on it. Next class was a boring but much needed one; I explained to them 5 things that happen inside our body due to pollution. The students then selected 3- which were blocking of the arteries in the heart, lung inflammation and deafness (due to noise pollution).

We then got to rehearsing and trying new ideas:

 

 

The above video is just one of the starting exercises we did everyday before beginning our rehearsals. This was a good way to get the boys to focus and also relax after having long days.

After having done the rehearsals we felt that the physical movements though self explanatory, do become a little too complex with the uninitiated. Therefore w decided to do flashcards. This introduced another Theatre form to our production: Epic Theatre. Created by none other than Bertold Brecht, Epic Theatre was based upon the ideology that an audience needed to know they were watching a play. Flashcards were an aspect of that Theatre. However, we all also agreed that the audience needed to distance themselves from any emotional evolvement and only take away our message about pollution.

Therefore, we came to the final production which you can view here:

 

 

 

 

They say pictures say a 1000 words. So before writing an essay and boring you all, take a look for yourself. 

There is a non-profit organisation in New Delhi, which goes by the name Aarohan. It provides extra classes to those students who wouldn’t be able to afford them otherwise. I volunteered to work here to teach whoever wished to learn about Theatre. The first class I got was of 5 teenagers who are bursting with enthusiasm. It was their first time learning this art, and it was my first time teaching it.

So what was my first production about? Dengue. A disease which is caused when Aedes aegypti, a mosquito, bites a person. This mosquito has affected almost 20,000 Indians per year, according to the The Union Health Ministry. When research was conducted by scientists, they found that these mosquitos breed in water and tend to be most dangerous during our Monsoons, also known as our rainy season. Coincidentally the time I started going to Aarohan was in the monsoon season; hence, i wrote a play around this deadly disease. It was called “Let’s Trace It”. It was about a boy whose mother had this disease and was spending all his hard earned money trying to save her life. The point of the production was to inform the audience of this horrible disease and how it can weigh down on our pockets.Thus, i added a role for a doctor to educate the people in the audience of this disease and also how to prevent it. To get the right audience for this information to have effect upon i decided to do a street play.

I had written the script. I had the audience. One more thing i needed was which drama style did i want to pursue- Brecht’s Epic Theatre, Artaud’s Theatre Of Cruelty or Stanislavsky’s Method Acting/ Realism. To get this answer I relied on my students; i waited to hear what they have to say about the script and about the characters. From that i unearthed that they wanted the story to be as realistic as possible to get the audience to sympathise with the dying mother and the struggling son. Therefore, we decided to go with Stanislavsky.

I introduced them to go the concepts of Method Acting like emotional memory, relaxation and the “what if” scenario. I limited us to those as i didm;t want to confuse or burden them with the rest of Stanislavsky’s methods. Here we are during the rehearsal period:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We rehearsed every day for a week when finally my team was ready to take the stage in the middle of New Delhi’s busy streets.

 

In case you missed anything from that day I compiled all the videos and pictures here to share with you my experience!