An atmospheric show

The aim of ‘SPACE’ is to create awareness among students on the surroundings.

November 20, 2014 07:09 pm | Updated 07:09 pm IST

For a social cause: SPACE theater workshop.

For a social cause: SPACE theater workshop.

This writer met a young and energetic group of four girls recently at a school in Salem where they had come to create awareness on the environment among students. It was a chance meeting, when Andrea Pereira, the leader of the ensemble, informed me that they are from Goa but are now headquartered at Tiruvannamalai, from where they move to schools and colleges across the country.

After the training session for the selected students was over, Andrea spoke of her group, ‘SPACE,’ its origin and work. “‘SPACE – Society for Promoting Arts, Culture & Education’ is a theatre group, started by Hartman DeSouza, the present director, who is a journalist. We use a script, both in English and Tamil, by Uma Narayanan, a poet based in America. We got a few of her English poems [translated] into Tamil by Natesh of Koothu-p-pattarai” said Andrea.

Andrea’s colleagues - Rachana, from Nagpur, Kathija from Chennai and Heidi from Goa - are articulate and perform on the stage after a quick rehearsal. Rachana’s advantage is that she speaks Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi and English that allows her to switch between languages with ease, depending upon the student-audience.

Meena Sethuraman, correspondent of the Golden Gates School and Emerald Valley Public School, Salem, who is also an activist, says, “I want this theatre group not only to perform for our students, but also train them for a few performances so that we can present them in our auditorium for the benefit of the other students!” The principals, V. Kanchna and Lakshmi Padmanabhan, motivated the students to closely observe the scenes and absorb the contents of the themes.

“ The SPACE theatre ensemble is a self-sustaining theatre repertory functioning since 2009. It engages young people through theatre and helps professionalise the arts. Over the past five years, it has trained over 25 apprentice actors intensively through residency courses. They have performed in New Delhi, Saharanpur, Mussourie, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Goa, Ahmedabad, Surat and villages in Odisha, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand.

“Since early September this year, the ensemble has been in its fourth residency with a group of five young women, aged between 18 and 26 years, from different parts of the country and is being hosted by the Marudam Farm School, south of Arunachala Hills in Tiruvannamalai district” said Andrea.

“Our content includes short performances ranging for 20 - 40 minutes on themes connected to the environment, education and gender inequality. And along with younger children of Marudam, we are also developing a repertoire for those in kindergarten and primary schools. The more we interact with young people, the more we realise that they switch off to words like nature, women empowerment, clean and green or save the earth. What better way to address this than through a performance?” asks Andrea.

A significant part of their interaction with students has been through theatre workshops that are customised according to the needs of the school. “At the Sri Ram School, in Gurgaon, we worked with fourth standard students using theatre to engage with them on issues of bullying and aggression. The Woodstock School in Mussourie invited us to work with their drama group on how theatre could be used to interact with the community around the school, beginning with the problem of tackling waste, along the slopes of the hill station.”

“At the Nirmala Institute of Education in Goa, we worked with 98 students, training to be teachers, over a month-long workshop and evolved a performance, titled ‘Compulsory Mis-education’ and then performed it for their annual day” informs Andrea. SPACE always looks forward to integrating with new educational institutions and strengthening relationships within existing networks. The group, which will be in Chennai this week, may be contacted on ensemblespace theatre@gmail.com .

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