To popularise the performing arts and emphasis its significance in improving educational needs of children, a maiden week-long Children’s Theatre Festival will be organised in Chandigarh.
Chandigarh Sangeet Natak Akademi will organise the Children’s Theatre Festival from September 3 to 8 at 5 pm onwards at Sector 17, Plaza here.
Everyday, three to four plays will be staged by students from various schools of Chandigarh during the festival. These plays are evolved by children themselves during the theatre workshops conducted in various Government schools in collaboration with UT Department of Education and Department of Cultural Affairs.
A spokesperson of the Chandigarh Sangeet Natak Akademi said that so far, we have finished 19 workshops and play productions facilitated by 19 theatre artists. 19 sensitive facilitators to work with the children of Government schools were identified and further sensitized to work with the children in a special workshop involving lots of personal sharing of the participants.
He said that various aspects of children theatre were explored through children theatre exercises and improvisations. And, various activities were designed to draw attention of the adult world to the cultural and aesthetic needs of the children.
The process of children’s theatre involves the opportunity for the participating children to evolve their own play, work in tandem with the director/facilitator in scripting and presenting the play and mounting the play production. The uniqueness of the process of working with the children is that it allows the facilitator a lot of freedom and space to create innovative teaching-learning experiences for the participating children, said the spokesperson.
As a part of our approach to reach out to the children through creative activities, we have been using many techniques to break barriers to learning like interactive art activities that include the exercise of thinking skills, Story-telling and related activities. Activities that help develop the participant’s visual-spatial skills. Puzzles and games that help develop figuring-out skills, added the spokesperson.