Hands on education, student-centric learning methodology, skill-based learning, are indeed some of the concepts that schools of today have adopted.
It is a proven fact that the children being born in this digital world are far ahead in their thinking processes and there is a paradigm shift in the trends of education over the past decade.
It is this belief and conviction that made V. Arun Kumar, Founder Trustee of Calibre Academy International School, to bring out the concept of the adapted Alice in Wonderland. He envisaged a production by the Calibre students of Theatre club, one of the ten career clubs the school nurtures.
The students were given an opportunity to choose the characters, modify them, re-create the story, script and donned the roles of director, music director and choreographer. They came out with indeed a new captivating masterpiece imagining, how Alice in wonderland would be if this little girl Alice was a resident of Chennai.
As the play unfurled, it brought out the creative talents and imagination of the children. The mirage of little Alice was created by handling simple techniques to portray to the audience how Alice looked when she grew in size. This story has been enacted a number of times by innumerable artists but yet, the novelty of the portrayal handled by the Calibre students was outstanding. Such ingenuity could come only from the children of today, reinforcing the vision of the school to nurture proactive global citizens.
Calibre Students are now students of an International School and to justify this, the dialogues were not only in English but also had lines in French, Japanese, Italian and Hindi. They also included songs in Japanese, Hindi and Tamil. They proved themselves to be global citizens of which the school envisages.
This production was performed by the Calibreans recently at Kamaraj Arangam, as the school celebrated its seventh Annual Day. The proud rendering of the school song accompanied by video edited by Merwin of Class IX, took the parents and guests on a journey thus far through all the happenings of Calibre. The glorious curtain was raised and the audience was taken through a scintillating performance of the original Alice in wonderland by the Calibreans of Pre KG to Class III followed by the 90-minute of the adapted version by the senior students of the school.
‘Dreams to reality’ is the theme for Calibre Academy this year, as brought out by all the curricular and co-curricular activities. It is in tandem with this theme presented by Arun Kumar Vaddi that led to the production of Alice in Wonderland. Madhuvanthi Arun, Correspondent, Calibre Academy, delivered the welcome address.
The guests for the evening, Chanchai Charanvatnakit, Consul General of Thai Consulate, Chennai; Sita Uma Maheshwaran, Principal, PSBB Millennium School, Gergumbakkam; T.M Krishna, classical vocalist in presence of Dr YGP, Dean and Director, PSBB Schools, made the show a grand success. Mr. Krishna, in his address, said that, “Today I watched the 250 plus children on stage, every child was an Alice today on stage lending her imagination run free to explore his/her world”.
Sita Umamaheshwaran said, “It was wonderful to see the rebirth of characters alive on a Chennai stage.” Dr. YGP expressed her pride and joy in watching the kids bring out their characters. She said, “I am overjoyed to see all the kids so involved in their characters putting up their little bit so well to make the entire show a beautiful one. The presentation of Calibrean awards for outstanding performing artists of the year and the star of Calibre award added glory and charm to the wonderful evening.
