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Holidays, camera, lights...Action!
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This summer students of Sri Venkateswara Bala Kuteer in Guntur are out to entertain their counterparts from the other side of the small screen says Ramesh Susarla
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TOONAMI TOONS to Power Puff Girls, Tom and Jerry to the latest Tollywood number keeps children glued to the Idiot Box for hours in their holidays. . Hurrah! holidays are here again. Its action time for the students of Sri Venkateswara Bala Kuteer. Children are rushing back to the school with a renewed vigour.
Perplexed? Yes, it is rehearsal time in the school with the children preparing for shooting of a docudrama `Swatantra Jyothi' at the Doordarshan Studio. Rani Jhansi Bai, Subhas Chandra Bose, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu, Alluri Seetaramaraju, have come alive on the school dais with the school secretary, Nannapaneni Manga Devi, a writer and national awardee in producing children's literature, is giving the final touches to the presentation of the patriotic ballet written by her.
Thirty students from Bala Kuteer are bubbling with enthusiasm and eagerly waiting for April 6 when their docudrama with patriotic flavour would be shot in Vijayawada Doordarshan Studio.
Only a listener of music and admirer of dance, Ms. Manga Devi, is adept at directing ballet for her own script. She has been spending three to four hours a day with children fine-tuning their performance at the rehearsals in the school. Bhamakalapam, Jayadeva Ashtapadi loaded with srungararasam could be the usual fare at a classical dance show, but it is a learning process for the high school students, they know what they are portraying unlike mechanically making some movements mechanically,'' she opines.
Excelling in examinations is only a part of the student life, but coming out in flying colours in extra-curricular activities also describes the comprehensive education they received for shaping their personality, she proudly says admiring the performance of Shruti of Tenth Standard as the Burra Kadhakuralu.
History of the country is known, but it is never boring to watch a patriotic ballet if presented in the right perspective with proper interludes and action-filled scenes, says Ms. Manga Devi, who has chosen the traditional form of story-telling in rural Andhra Pradesh. Freedom struggle is being depicted from the time of Rani Jhansi, with Burra Kadhakuralu narrating her courageous acts and another Tenth Standard student Prasanna enacting Jhansi, is usher into the scene and the narrators receding to the background.
Shruti with her experience in performing similar ballets in front of camera in the school and in Hyderabad, is cool and improvising her action, while Prasanna, who will be facing the camera for the first time, is attentively adhering to all the commands given their dance teachers Mahankali Suryanarayana Sarma and Krishna Kumari.
Kaushik in his Seventh Standard is playing Lokamanya Gangadhar Tilak and has done his homework by going through the chapter on the freedom fighter to make his performance as natural as possible, though he does not have to speak many words.
Selection of students for the characters was the most difficult task with the Principal, Ms. Jayashree along with all class teachers visiting all class rooms and choosing students based on their physical appearance that suited the character they would be playing in the docudrama.
Dharmendra of Seventh Standard is playing Pingali Venkaiah, without much knowledge about the great personality, but vows to know completely about the freedom fighter's life.
Ms. Manga Devi, a social worker, a lover of plants and pioneer in Bonsai in Guntur, had received NCERT award for her book Prakruti Saranam Gachachami in Telugu in the Children's Literature category in 1998-99. Performance in front of invited guests at the All India Radio annual programme on the occasion of Children's Day had become a routine for her students after her first book Yerra Gulabilu won wide acclaim. She also got a breakthrough in introducing her scripts in AIR programmes with Yerra Gulabilu, after getting rejected several times.
It was the performance of the children on stage that made the AIR authorities sit up and take notice of the script, she says proudly giving credit to the children.
All her scripts for several themes have been published in the form of books in two volumes.
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