Rani DM

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will engage eight grade students of the Government High School in Hosahundi village, Mysore district with Interactive Theatre practice and its applications, by encouraging them to build arguments and dialogues around themes and ideas based on their school curriculum. Rani DM will be the Coordinator for this project. 

Rani is a theatre practitioner from Mysore. She has been part of many theatre groups in Bangalore and Mysore. She also has experience in theatre management and arts administration along with acting and backstage work. Rani has organised summer camps and art workshops for children and she believes that the performing arts has a great impact on the mental wellbeing of children. Given her experience she is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

While conventional theatre establishes the imaginary fourth wall between the audience and the actors, Interactive Theatre is more transparent and breaks the boundaries between actors and the audience making conversations between them possible. This theatre form helps to devise plays where audience participation plays a critical role in the conceptual framework of the play. This form has the flexibility to decide whether lighting, sets, props, costume, and makeup is needed or not for its performance. This project will attempt to engage eight grade students of the Government High School in Hosahundi village, Mysore district in understanding and playing with Interactive Theatre and its application.  

In the first phase, students will be engaged with theatre games as an ice breaker which will be followed by preliminary sessions on Interactive Theatre. They will be encouraged to share their own stories, as well as read stories and various theatre scripts for children in order to understand the flow of scenes and dialogues in these plays. Rani will make arrangements for students to watch some work from the genre of Interactive Theatre including Kelu Janamejaya by veteran dramatist Adya Rangacharya. Students will have an exchange and knowledge sharing session at the end of the first phase. Rani will organise a study tour for students and teachers at the beginning of the second phase to explore the city of Mysore and collect local stories and songs by interacting with shopkeepers, vegetable vendors, palace guards, artisans, and other local folk. They will juxtapose their found stories with lessons from their social science curriculum. 

Students will attempt to collate the stories from their study tour and develop a theatre script in the Interactive Theatre format. They will be divided into teams and will be given a topic from their curriculum for discussion wherein they will learn to interact with each other and improvise on the given topic. Rani believes that this activity will help them develop their communication, thinking ability, and spontaneity on one hand, and reduce stage fear and lack of confidence on the other. In the third phase, Rani will invite resource persons to conduct a series of workshops on writing, acting, makeup, and craft. Alongside this, Rani is planning to create a platform for students to discuss and debate on the current socio-political issues including COVID-19 and the Ukraine war in order to keep them connected to the shifts and changes happening in the world they inhabit. 

At the end of the project, students will bring together all their learning into creating an Interactive Theatre performance, which will be followed by post-performance conversations with teachers and parents.

The outcome of the project will be a performance in the presence of school staff and community members. The deliverables to IFA with the final report will include still and video documentation of the process and the performance.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Education programme in the manner in which it attempts to help students connect their school curriculum to the stories from the regions they inhabit and communities they live with.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.