Being a part of the story
MADHUMITHA SRINIVASAN
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The Story Telling Showcase proved to be popular not only with the kids but with adults also.
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In session : Enacting the story.
Story telling is hard work, considering you have to hold an audience whose attention shifts faster than an excited monkey jumping trees.
With a majority of the audience made up of kids below the age of 10, Jeeva Ragunath did an amazing job of treating the young and the old alike, with an animated narration of stories from around the world, also aided intermittently by mime.
The Story Telling Showcase, held recently, was organised as a part of Reach Out’s two-day Children’s Theatre Festival at Music Academy also featuring the Sing Along Show the next day.
The children, their parents and some teachers picked up a few pointers on the art of story telling. They were all equally engrossed in the stories of How the sky went up to where it is from South America, The lazy boy called Jack, Machu and Pichu (narrated by Dr. Preethika Chari), The dog’s wish from Thailand and the famous tale of a cap seller and the monkeys, narrated in Tamil.
Much excitement
And just when you were wondering if old fables could be made interesting to a crowd consisting of adults who would have grown up listening to such stories, there came Nandini Sridhar narrating the age-old Kaka-Nari (The vain crow and the wily fox) story in rap. Shanthini Venugopal and Cinzia Ciaramocoli of the Jumping Jelly Beans group, Malaysia, part-narrated and part-enacted the Red Riding Hood story with a twist.
Have you ever heard of Red Riding Hood wanting to put on a green hood because it suited her better or riding a bike into the woods? Poor Cinzia, aka Coco, got it all mixed up and had to be constantly put right by Shantini, aka Jojo.
With so much excitement on stage you just can’t afford to sit quietly, can you? Who else would prop the sky up using poles while chanting “girrrr-garrrr-gurrrr” or grant the dog’s wishes with an “Om oom pah!”, every time it wanted to turn to something more powerful than its current state?
Suddenly it just didn’t seem like an evening meant only for the children with everyone joining in the fun and chanting and eagerly answering questions like, “Now what is inside the old woman? A…” “…cat, a bird, a spider and a fly!” in unison.
“It was amazing. It should be held more often. In fact, it is better than taking the children to watch cartoons”, said Rathna, mother of a four-year-old.
And seems like the Children’s Theatre Festival will make its Story Telling Showcase a regular feature just like its Sing Along Show.
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