A trained electrical engineer, who worked in an IT firm for 15 months, Vivek Vijayakumaran suddenly changed the tracks of his life, quit his IT career and plunged into theatre full time.
“It all started with dance and theatre in school and college. Later, I got through a few auditions and worked with Mahesh Dattani and Abhishek Majumdar before starting my own production house called Our Theatre,” says the 30-year-old actor.
“Life was difficult in theatre, but money does not excite me much. I have simple needs and am able to manage a living by acting and telling stories,” says Vivek, who has worked with a couple of schools in the city and also in slums.
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Then it was story telling that lured Vivek. So he went on a training session with Geeta Ramanujam before taking off on his own. “Working with her was a great experience. It even taught me how to use my body and actions to narrate a story to the speech and hearing impaired. You are pushed to your limit when you are working with them.”
He now will be a part of Shoonya’s children’s workshop called Phirki, which refers to pin-wheel in Hindi.
He will be facilitating two sessions - Dreams and Fantasies and Panchatantra story telling.
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Dreams and fantasies is a session for children aged six and above and he explains that he will use theatre to bring their dreams and fantasies to life. “Theatre is beautiful because you can create anything in an empty space with just two people.”
“Panchatantra tales happened as I was drawn to these stories and felt it would be wonderful if we could narrate them to children. Panchantantra has lovely stories, which are waiting to be discovered.”
In this particular workshop Vivek aims to “transport the child into an imaginative world”. He may not use props as “it may define and force their imagination to my boundaries. I want to leave everything to them.”
Vivek also plans to have an exercise session before and after the story telling. “One includes theatre exercises to prepare them for what is going to come. The other is an exercise to see how they reflect on the story they have just heard.”
In this age day of technology he feels that there is a need for more story tellers and every family should make an effort to expose the child to various kinds of sensorial perceptions, which a child cannot get from a machine.
“The challenge of being a story teller is sometimes to find a story that has never been heard before. And, if even one child has heard the story before, then the challenge is how to make that story interesting so that he does not get bored before the word ‘the end’”.
Log on to >www.shoonyaspace.com for more details.