In a move to promote children’s theatre in rural India, the National School of Drama (NSD) will showcase the results of its first such effort with Odisha’s tribal children in the form of two plays produced in a children’s theatre workshop in the State.
Calling theatre the perfect educational tool, NSD Director-in-Charge Suresh Sharma said the NSD is targeting the interiors of India, including India’s tribal belt, for widening the base of children’s theatre in the country.
In its first such exercise, the NSD organised theatre workshops in remote villages of Harichandanpur in Keonjhar district and Pallahara in Angul district. They involved 80 local children, at least 60 per cent of whom belong to different tribes, and borrowed from their own stories for the play plots.
The month-long workshops culminated with the staging of the two plays in the respective villages. The NSD plans to focus next on tribal-dominated areas in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
Similar workshops, however, have been taking place in the national Capital since 1976. This year, the children’s theatre workshop here trained 90 children aged between 8-15 years.