Helping girls break shackles, let loose creativity

Jwala, a residential camp by Samagra Shiksha, wants them to shed inhibitions

January 19, 2019 11:30 pm | Updated January 10, 2022 10:53 am IST - Thiruvananthapuram

Thirty young girls sit around a dimly lit ‘nalukettu’ inside Mithraniketan at Perunthanni here. After a tea break, they are all set for a second session on acting as part of Jwala, a four-day creative residential camp organised by the Samagra Shiksha, Kerala, for girls to discover themselves and enhance and express their creative potential.

On Day Two of Jwala, the challenge set for the students, belonging to classes 7 to 9, by Rajesh Navath and Ajith Ramachandran who head the camp, is for one girl to start enacting a scene, with the other joining in to carry the story forward with clarity an original thought.

In the first round, when two girls enact how a boy approaches a girl whom he sees sitting alone and strikes up a friendship, Rajesh impresses upon them the importance of body language. The second round sees him give the girls a subject to enact — violence — and leaves it to them to imagine how best to present the subject and the forms it can manifest in.

All activities at the camp are designed with the goal of Jwala in mind, says Rajesh, Assistant Professor at the School of Drama, Thrissur, and Ajith, an alumnus of the School of Drama.

Unconventional training

The 12-14 hour days begin with physical exercise at 7 a.m. Yoga and Kalari are practised, but the attempt is also to get the girls to shed their inhibitions about their bodies and express themselves freely, says Rajesh.

Unlike a conventional theatre camp where the nuances of acting and stagecraft are taught, the camp uses techniques of theatre to teach them how to express themselves freely — let their mind and body break free of shackles.

The acting sessions take off from what the girls did in the morning — take part in a women’s parliament that focussed on gender-related problems in the country at present. “How gender-related problems should be discussed, how they should be approached, how to prepare for it, how to determine their space and their identity — these were some of the issues discussed at the parliament.”

Rajesh says the girls, though not suffering from stage fright and regularly taking part in various creative activities, were back in their shells when they reached the camp on Friday morning. However, by evening, when they discussed issues related to contemporary Kerala, they were on their way to thinking outside the box.

“What we want is for them to become aware, strong, and confident of their abilities, and not be weighed down by notions of what girls should be and the restrictions they tend to be bound by,” he says.

Ideas and identities

Theatre games, debates, and other activities are all geared towards making them creative, aware of individual and social identities, and of ideas such as freedom and equality.

On Sunday, a street play will be held at East Fort by the 30 girls from the 12 sub-districts attending the camp. Jwala camps are under way in the southern districts of the State till January 21. Similar camps will be held in the northern districts from January 25. A State-level camp will be held in February.

Top News Today

Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.