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India Foundation for the Arts
Quarterly Newsletter Edition 20
July-September 2011
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Supporting IFA
Connect with IFA to watch some of India’s prominent performers take to the stage to support the arts.

Kucch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai

Naseeruddin Shah returned to Bangalore to support IFA with George Bernard Shaw’s Arms & the Man.

Learn about the Arts as you support them. Become a Friend of IFA. As a Friend, you will be contributing directly to philanthropy in the arts and encouraging the presence of the arts in public life. It starts at just Rs 2500/- a year and your donation is tax-deductible. In return, you will receive exclusive access to IFA events, the ArtConnect magazine, and our annual reports.

Buy Now!
IFA Publications
Beyond the Proscenium
Beyond the Proscenium: Reimagining the Space for Performance
Edited by Anmol Vellani
176 pp., Rs 300, US$ 20
Buy Online!
Mail: editor@indiaifa.org

ARTCONNECT issue 8
ArtConnect
IFA biannual magazine on the Arts
Special Issue on the Performing Arts
Edited by C.K. Meena
84 pp., Rs 100, US$ 5
Subscribe to ArtConnect
Mail: editor@indiaifa.org

IFA in your city

You wouldn’t want to miss IFA in your city. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. All events are public and free, unless otherwise stated.

The following events were held in different cities in the last three months:

 

bird_bullet NEW DELHI
Zuleikha Chaudhari
Installation
Propositions: On Texts and Space III
By Zuleikha Chaudhari
October, 19-28, 2011
11 am - 5 pm (Daily)
CSDS Library 29 Rajpur Road Cilvil Lines, New Delhi

Conference
Theatre for Young Audience: Concept, Need and Possibilities
August 04-06, 2011

bird_bullet MUMBAI
Workshop
Film Curatorial Practice
August 22-26, 2011

bird_bullet HYDERABAD
Workshop
Curatorial Theory
September 12 - 17, 2011
 
BIG PICTURE II Catalogue Cover

We launched Big Picture II, Artists for a home for the Arts, on 04 October 2011 in Bangalore. 89 artists donated 103 artworks including paintings, sculptures, photographs and works in mixed media for this show. Renowned artist Rekha Rodwittiya opened the exhibition and was in conversation with curator Abhishek Poddar and IFA’s Deputy Director, Arundhati Ghosh, on the importance of supporting the arts. IFA is grateful to all the artists who have very generously donated artwork in support of IFA.

Big Picture II, Leela Palace, Bangalore
Exhibition view of Big Picture II
Last year IFA bought a small piece of land in Bangalore to build a permanent home and in July this year we launched our Capital Campaign to raise funds for our building, a home for the arts. (You can go here and listen to the talk shared by Anmol Vellani, Executive Director, at the launch, which best captures the spirit behind this campaign.) The donations received at Big Picture II will go towards this Campaign.
Abhishek POddar & Rekha Rodwittiya
Curator Abhishek Poddar with Chief Guest Rekha Rodwittiya

Do click on this link to download a free Big Picture II catalogue. We will soon podcast the conversation between Rekha Rodwittiya, Abhishek Poddar and Arundhati Ghosh.

You can support us in this campaign by contributing any amount that is convenient to you. Most importantly you will become a part of the journey we are making. Please download your pledge here and help us build a home for the arts.

Arts Education
Group discussion after a break-out session | Image courtesy India Foundation for the Arts
Arts Education

Kali-Kalisu is an arts-based training initiative for government school teachers across Karnataka. It is a joint project of IFA and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore.

This is the third year of the initiative, and IFA is organising regional conferences to reinforce the work done under Kali-Kalisu. These conferences invite teachers trained under Kali-Kalisu to share and discuss their experiences. The teachers also get to observe and interact with the work being done by independent artist-educators.

The 3rd and final regional conference was held on August 18 & 19, 2011 at the Karnataka State Open University, Mysore. There were nearly 125 participants and 13 speakers
Arts Research and Documentation

We are delighted to announce two new grants we have made:

  • Makarand Sathe |Translation of the book, Marathi Natkachya Tees Ratri: Ek Samajik Rajkiya Itihas from Marathi to English. An earlier IFA grant had supported the research and writing of the book that chronicles the socio-political history of modern Marathi theatre.
  • Indrani Majumder | Collection, digitisation and archiving of 78 rpm gramophone records of Bengali plays performed between 1900 and 1930. The project will document the plays performed on the stage as well as those produced exclusively for gramophone recordings.
Curatorship
Q&A session, Workshop on Film Curatorial Practices |Image courtesy Katha Centre for Film Studies

Curatorship

Katha Centre for Film Studies, Mumbai (KCFS) held its second workshop on film curatorial practice in Mumbai from August 22-26, 2011 under the Curatorship Programme. The workshop examined the history of film curatorial practice in India through an inquiry into the history of the film society movement, state run festivals as well as the parallel trajectory evolved through the discursive practices of individual curators. The resource persons for the workshop were Madhushree Dutta, Gargi Sen, Amar Kanwar, Bina Paul, Moinak Biswas and Shai Heredia. Selected participants from the workshop will curate a set of film screenings in the month of February in Mumbai.

Association of Academics, Artists and Citizens for University Autonomy, Baroda (ACUA) conducted its third workshop in Hyderabad from September 12 – 17, 2011 that was aimed at devising a curriculum in curatorial studies, under the Curatorship programme. The workshop addressed contemporary challenges in curatorial practice within the museum context as a result of paradigmatic shifts such as the entry of popular visual culture and contemporary art within the pristine/elite space of the museum. The resource persons for the workshop included Jyotindra Jain, Susie Tharu, Christopher Pinney and Annapurna Garimella.

New Performance

Our New Performance programme has partially supported the first National Conference on Theatre for Young Audience (TYA). It was organised by ASSITEJ-India and Resource Centre for Elementary Education (RCEE), University of Delhi from August 04-06, 2011 at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

To know more about the conference and TYA, please read the Slant/Stance interview below with the convener of the conference, Dr. Ashish Ghosh.

Arms & the Man poster
A still from Arms and the Man
Events

Naseeruddin Shah returned to Bangalore to support IFA with George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. Set during the four-month-long Serbo-Bulgarian War that occurred between November 1885 and March 1886, this play is a satire on the foolishness of glorifying something so terrible as war, as well as a satire on the foolishness of basing your affections on idealistic notions of love. These themes brought reality and a timeless lesson to the comic stage. Consequently, once Shaw's genius was recognised, Arms and the Man became one of Shaw's most popular plays and has remained a classic ever since. Cast included Faezeh Jalali, Ratna Pathak Shah, Shivani Tanksale, Amit Sial, Saahil Vaid, Naseeruddin Shah, Randeep Hooda and Vijay Tilani. We thank Bangalore for giving us a full house! The Hindu carried a preview here and Daily Bhaskar carried an interview with cast member Randeep Hooda here. The donations received through this performance will be used by IFA to continue its grant making in the arts.

Slant / Stance
Merajur Rahman Baruah

Dr. Ashish Ghosh has a Ph.D. in Political Science with teaching and field research experience. Trained in children's theatre with an active interest in folk performance traditions, he is the founder director of ANANT, a theatre group in Delhi comprising young adults who have graduated from his drama workshops for children. As an active member of ASSITEJ India, he is actively involved in propagating the importance of Theatre for Young Audience (TYA) in India. He was the Convener of the First National Conference on TYA held in New Delhi from 4-6 August, 2011.

ASSITEJ India is the national gateway centre of ASSITEJ, an international alliance of groups, companies and individuals working in the field of TYA.

IFA: What issues, concerns and ground realities propelled you and your team to organise the first national conference on “Theatre for Young Audience: Concept, Need and Possibilities”?

Ashish Ghosh: A contextual background is needed to answer this particular question. The organisers of the Conference comprised children’s theatre activists working in education and educationists promoting theatre as a form of intervention in teaching-learning. They have been exposed to Theatre in Education (TiE), Heathcote and Bolton, Grips and Forum theatre, and yet faced the problem of contextualising theatre in India. With the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005, theatre gained a vital position along with dance, music and plastic art. A certain awareness developed in both the Government and private sectors to support theatrical activities and performances. However, the execution of the NCF in both the sectors opened a number of issues that started troubling many theatre practitioners as well as educationists.

We were introduced to ASSITEJ in 2004. It is a global initiative with the avowed objective of popularising Theatre for Young Audience (TYA). It focuses on the importance of exposing the young audience to artistically mounted plays by trained adults reflecting on the life-world of the young. TYA equally addresses the parents and families, the teachers and educationists, the activists and community mentors. In other words, TYA is universal theatre with a focus on the young, their aspirations and entertainment needs.

The need to introduce TYA as a concept, understand its benefits and explore possibilities for its development in India came from considering specific issues and concerns. Childrens’ theatre practitioners working in urban and remote areas work in isolation. We felt the need to bring them together, facilitate a platform for interaction and networking, and enable them to go back with ideas for wider possibilities. Majority of the theatrical activities conducted in isolated pockets have popularised children’s theatre workshops and propagated the value of theatre in education. However, a disturbing trend of using theatre for ‘personality development’ has emerged. Artistic merit is of secondary importance in most of the cases. The organisers felt the need for a shift—from the ‘uses’ of theatre to experiencing theatre. The logic is simple: without watching theatre, one cannot practice theatre. There is a need to develop a ‘viewing’ culture, appreciate a play and develop an aesthetic sensibility. This does not negate theatre’s role in education, pedagogy, therapy and social action; with artistic excellence in theatre productions, ‘using’ theatre becomes varied and nuanced. The organisers also felt the need for content development – to move from preachy, moralistic or de-contextualised fairy tales and fantasies to writing plays that reflect the concerns, dreams, and aspirations of the young. We particularly noticed the absence of such plays for the adolescents of India.

ASSITEJ

IFA: One of the three themes identified for the conference was ‘Theatre Practices: Reflection, Innovation and Future’. Does Theatre for Young Audience (TYA) exist as an independent performance practice in India? What reflections have the conference thrown up in this context?

Ashish Ghosh: One can find good examples of productions and practices akin to TYA: plays by the Bal Bhavan Repertory in the 1960s and 70s, National School of Drama’s Theatre in Education Company, Grips Theatre, productions by such independent companies like Khilona and ANANT in Delhi, Nandikar in Kolkata, Ranga Shankara in Bangalore, Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, and many more in other parts of the country. But these were all scattered in time and space without conceptual import. We were convinced that theatre for children by adults existed, but without the concept of TYA. Our focus was to introduce TYA as a practicing idea. We pre-planned this by working on a special issue of Theater der Zeit, Berlin, with focus on ‘Theatre for Young Audiences in India’. It was edited jointly by Wolfgang Schneider and Imran Khan, in collaboration with ASSITEJ Germany and ASSITEJ India, with a generous support from Goethe-Institut.

We planned the theme for the first day of the Conference as ‘Theatre Practices’. Our purpose was to see how far existing practices could help TYA to grow. We tried to select those papers and workshops that could help the practitioners mount innovative productions for the young. The papers and workshops demanded deeper understanding of issues and technical expertise. The keynote address by Sanjna Kapoor linked the Conference objectives with efforts elsewhere, like that of Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, and the wider scope of connecting TYA practitioners joining India Theatre Forum. In the second keynote address, Professor Wolfgang Schneider graphically presented the concept of TYA and its spread through ASSITEJ all over the world. Dadi Pudumjee’s presentation signified a leading practitioner’s life work in puppetry that could be a model for any TYA artist; Debashis Sen Sharma shared that positive psychology could be an effective approach for strengthening TYA; Jayoti Bose’s experience informed us that the notion of adults playing as children in Grips theatre format needed a move beyond; Sukesh Arora argued that the growing pervasiveness of technology in the lives of young people necessitates re-evaluation of traditional forms of storytelling in theatre; and Kaustubh Bankapure’s case study of applied theatre techniques created alternative space for actor-spectator engagement. All these were food for thought for any prospective TYA practitioner. In the workshops, we selected innovative practices: Choiti Ghosh and Anurupa Roy demonstrated the techniques of object theatre; Ashavari Majumdar worked out on the essentials of body language using Kathak; and Arka Mukhopadhyay demonstrated the theatrical techniques for using political metaphors. All these were targeted to exemplify the possibilities in TYA.

ASSITEJ

IFA: What were the learnings from the conference?

Ashish Ghosh: Such a conference to create a forum for interaction was long overdue. There is a greater need for concerted efforts to encourage and develop consciousness about excellence in children and youth theatre, explore diverse relations between theatre and education, and create appropriate dramatic literature for the young. The almost total absence of adolescent literature and youth theatre is shocking. There is greater need for research into the life-world of the young, by their age-specific requirements. The established writers for children must be inspired to turn their attention to writing plays for children and the young. Before the second conference is planned, more focused activities are needed. To make TYA a conceptual and practical possibility, it is necessary to go beyond Delhi and other metropolitan centres. It is important that urban practitioners find it fruitful to be part of ASSITEJ, and propagate TYA in adjoining areas. There is a greater need for advocacy at every level: the practitioners, the supporters, the educational institutions, the parents and families, the government and private agencies, the media. A long-term plan has to be floated for sustained development of TYA in India. The development of ASSITEJ India is vital for creating a leading Theatre for Young Audience in South Asia.

IFA: Based on the learnings from the conference, what are the directions and possibilities you see for TYA in India?

Ashish Ghosh: We need a long-term policy perspective, and a three-year plan projection for ASSITEJ India is a must. Talks are on for a ASSITEJ Asian Conference in July, 2013 in Chennai.

Meanwhile several initiatives are being planned so that the results of these works can be presented in the next Conference. Workshops for developing dramatic literature aimed at publication and dissemination are being planned. We will publish a regular E-Newsletter, one annual publication on TYA and revamp the existing ASSITEJ India web-site. We will initiate research on theatre and education, and on issues of growing up leading to script development and productions. Exchange programmes will be held between South Asian, Asian and other countries. We will formulate the requirements on a regular basis and presenting these before the ASSITEJ (International) Executive Committee for support. Participation in international festivals and forum, advocacy and spread of support base, and membership drive are being considered. We will also encourage the ASSITEJ India members to carry out regular activities at their places of work like popularising storytelling by the actors, observing World Day of Theatre for Young Audience on 20 March, and keeping the Secretariat informed about their activities for dissemination. For all these activities to be carried out on a regular basis, we need voluntary services and a secretariat space with office assistance.

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