Thinkarts Festival
Kolkata
This blog is about the Thinkarts International Festival for young audiences, which was a 5-day program held in Kolkata. It is a fun program consisting of plays and workshops which help students to observe, learn and enjoy along with their teachers and peers.
DAY 1
On the first day, after sleeping for a prolonged time, we had breakfast. We had a plan to visit a museum called the ‘Indian Museum.’ I was amazed to know that it is the oldest museum in India and the ninth oldest in the world! The museum had a variety of sculptures and interesting pieces of things that represented history; from the dinosaurs and mammoths to the Greek and the Mughal empire, the museum was filled with interesting content.
After observing and learning different facts throughout the museum, we had lunch and visited some shops to have fun.
Subsequently, we had the first component of the trip associated with the workshop. We went to watch 2 short films, both being quite different from one another. The first one was an interesting animation film in a foreign language(with subtitles) about a carefree girl who moves to a new school where everything is over-organized and every person has to follow very strict rules. The second film was a Bengali film(again, with subtitles). It was about a boy who writes to a mythological old lady living on the moon and further in the movie, he gets a reply. The short film revolves around the old lady and the boy’s conversation. It has a miraculous story with a very unexpected ending.
After this, we visited a show called ‘If only Rosa could do magic.’ It was a solo show by a foreign actress who plays the role of a 6-year-old. It was a very audience interactive show. I didn’t even realize that an hour had passed by because of the fun I had watching it.
DAY 2
Before going to a workshop we were going to have in the morning, we had breakfast and got ready. The workshop was not completely on acting whereas it consisted of fun activities and storytelling through props. One activity was to name things in groups which made the world as it is today and explain why. Even though this activity may sound easy, we were not allowed to repeat any point and therefore, it became thought-provoking after a few rounds. Overall, it was really fun for a 2-hour workshop.
Following this was a show called ‘Littu.’ This was a story of two girls who find a stone and treat it like a person, or their child in a way as they name it and take care of it. Even though the actors were great, their target audience was quite lower than ours which made us not being able to enjoy it as much we enjoyed other shows.
Afterwards, in the evening, was the show which turned out to be the best one out of all the shows. It was a documentary theatre piece called ‘Lady Anandi.’ Even though this genre did not seem interesting to me at the start, it was amazing! The piece was about the great grandfather of the actress who was performing. It showed how her great grandfather used to play the role of women in plays. She narrated it like a story and acted in between. The actress was brilliant with her expressions and dialogues and altogether, the play was quite riveting.
DAY 3
Today was more of a tour day, except the fact that there was going to be a long workshop in the evening. Firstly, we visited a theatre which is one of the oldest ones in the world. Despite the fact that it has changed a lot; when we went backstage, it gave a resemblance to older times. We got a tour of how everything works there by one of the staff members. It was really interesting to find out different things about how the lighting and sound there work as that is the unit in drama we were working on.
Consecutively, we were supposed to visit the planetarium, but because I was not feeling well, I had to rest.
After having lunch, we went for the workshop which was going to be hosted by the actress from ‘Lady Anandi.’ The workshop consisted of a larger age group compared to the previous one. The first activity consisted of us writing a speech from someone else’s perspective after you have passed away. The best part was that we could be as creative with this activity as we want to. It didn’t have to be serious, the speech could even be funny. The second activity we did was in groups consisting of the group members mixing the stories of what they had written in their speech showing the aftermath of someone passing away through the medium of social media. For example, each of our group members had described ourselves, in a way. We mixed these characters into one character who has now passed away. Our play showed the conversation of the people who knew him on a WhatsApp group in a funny manner, showing how nobody even cared about the person. Overall, the workshop was really interactive and intriguing.
DAY 4
This day was the last on our trip; we had to leave early evening. Firstly, it was time for the last play we were going to watch on the trip. The play was called ‘chalk about.’ It was a funny and entertaining play to watch. It was performed by a woman and a man. It consisted of acting, music, stories and a lot of humour. After saying goodbye to multiple friends we had made over the week, we visited the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic garden. It is a beautiful botanical garden near Kolkata and it has the widest and oldest Banyan tree in the world! Not just that, the botanical garden had a lake and was filled with distinct species of butterflies and plants. Overall, it was really fun to visit this place and apart from getting good photographs, we could get fresh air.
All in all, this trip consisted of interesting and fun components and I hope for another such workshop next year.