Sanket Trust

Ranga Shankara, the theatre initiative of the Sanket Trust, has a broad-based Theatre for Children programme called AHA! The one-day of activities proposed under this IFA Arts Education grant form part of the ancillary activities of Ranga Shankara’s first ever theatre festival exclusively for children and will run from late August to mid-September. Performances from the city, around India and other parts of the world will be showcased, most of which will be new to the children of the city.

The AHA! Festival has two important objectives. First, the festival hopes to be the hub for a cross-section of society and germinate new ideas around children’s theatre. AHA! is particularly keen to catalyse meaningful discussions among the constituencies that mould a child’s life––teachers, parents and theatre practitioners who work with children.

Ranga Shankara has designed two Ancillary Activities that this grant will support. The first is a Teacher Training Initiative consisting of a day-long workshop designed to forge a long-term network of theatre practitioners and teachers which can serve as a resource over time. The heart of the workshop will be spent exploring what the facilitators see as the core values of theatre: trust, play, improvisation and inspiration. The other curricular modules are the history of Indian theatre and skills training for teachers.

The second ancillary activity is an interactive symposium between theatre practitioners and pedagogues on ‘Theatre Pedagogy for Children’. Apart from local practitioners and pedagogues, there will be significant participation from the Republic of Germany in the form of Dr Wolfgang Schneider, President of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People.

IFA sees the proposed Ancillary Activities as valuable interventions, particularly in light of its new focus areas for arts education and its ongoing ‘Kali-Kalisu’ programme.

This grant is made possible with support from Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore.