Be it Cinderella going out for a ball or Batman riding his bike or Shakuntala losing her ring, listening to folk and fairytales in our childhood days was fascinating. Here’s an opportunity to once again go into dreamland with the ongoing Kathakar Festival. The best of storytellers from India and abroad have come on board to take you to the world of imagination through their unique style of storytelling.
“Students have been taught about morals and culture through storytelling. But sometimes they lose interest. It becomes more like a lesson that we are trying to teach through storytelling. Thus, we need to tell stories that get everyone thinking and let the children find their own answers to the questions that pop up. Perceive things in their own understanding and belief. Weaving the morals and values in the world of fantasy fiction and telling the story in a subtle manner is the key to make your children aware and entertained,” Emily Hennessey, a storyteller from UK tells you.
The problem is that fantasy and fiction stories are an illusion, when children get to know that it never happened in reality, it breaks their heart and are saddened about it. But this superficial world helps them to understand the emotions.
“Fairytales are superficial but the fundamental core of stories is that it let you experience and understand the feelings like loss or sorrow or the first time the heart got broken like the agony of parents dying or how they struggle to make your dreams come true. When we get to live little bit in the world of the stories, we get to feel someone else’s feelings. Such emotional journey is what storytelling lets us do. Some things may not be possible in real life but there are important lessons that are to be learnt. These were a lot of stories that were told during our childhood days that were not true but I hope there was something that made you the person you are today,” Tim Ralphs, a storyteller from UK says.
The festival is open till today and has free entry for all. The evening session will kickstart from 4:30pm at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts and will have an informal session to take tips, learn ideas on storytelling and performance from the other artists like Emily Hennessey, Giles Abbott from UK and Usha Venkataraman from Mumbai.