"Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it." - Augusto Boal
The above lines August Boal, a famous theatre personality, show us how performing arts can help children grow and prepare for life situations, where they understand how to solve problems and develop social skills. We, at The Pink Foundation, focus on educating our children through art, culture and all those curricular means which enable life-skill development in our children, rather than adopting a class-room teaching pattern.
To further this endeavour of ours, The Pink Foundation team of Chandigarh organised a Theatre Workshop for children in Majri slums in collaboration with Parampara Arts of Chatora’s Creative Army, one of the most esteemed theatre academies in Chandigarh. Nearly 50 children participated in this workshop which was conducted for a span of one week for around 2 hours every day by highly experienced theatre personalities associated with Parampara Arts.
Through this workshop, we saw our otherwise apprehensive and shy children turn into a bunch of confident artists, thanks to the one week long training by the artists. While the first 3 days were focused primarily on activity based understanding of discipline, team work and other theatre techniques, the last 3-4 days of the workshop saw them preparing and performing short skits based on different stories.
They were generally divided into diverse groups to perform team-oriented activities such as making human chains etc., which allowed children to mingle with everyone, which further helped break several gender and caste barriers. Children were also given a free hand at improvising so as to challenge their inner creativity and they surely surprised all of us with their abundant talent by the end. The closing day of the workshop saw these children perform extraordinary skits before all the members of the organisation and other public.
A small step of teaching theatre to around 50 kids from Majri slums, eventually even facilitated imparting of discipline, good behaviour and personality development. All thanks to the very talented artists from Parampara Arts who took out abundant time everyday from their daily schedule to not only spend time with these kids but to nurture them and work hard on their inherent abilities.