Last few weekends were the happiest and most memorable days of my life.  I just can’t explain in words how much I have learnt, groomed and matured myself as a person in those few weekends.  All the credit goes to YOURS TRULY. 

Oh, by now you must be wondering what is “YOURS TRULY”?  YOURS TRULY is the second theatre group in India to practice playback style of theatre (Whose line is it anyway types).  Oh ho…  Again a jargon !!  What is playback style now? 

Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot.

Yourstruly is a theatre group created by two amazing individuals Ranji David and Nandini Rao.  You should talk to these people to understand the dedication and passion they have for theatre.  I don’t know if you people have read “The alchemist” but after meeting them I think all you have to do is talk to them.  No need of any book on following passion and being happy.  Scrap all self-help books. 

Alrighty coming back to my experience in the workshop, Yourstruly conducts seasonal workshops; they take approximately 30 people in a batch.  My batch consisted of about 27 people to begin with and on the show day, we were about 22.   Workshop is for 5 consecutive Sundays from morning 10:30 to evening 6:00.  Initially it may seem a lot of commitment in terms of time, but it’s worth every minute in the end.  The feeling of doing something worthwhile is more than a million dollar.   

The workshop does not contain any reading, writing material.  It’s completely based on the practical work and that’s the biggest difference in the style of faciliting compared to any other workshops.  Both Ranji and Nandini strongly believe in doing things, making mistakes, and learning from it.  Workshop is well structured and has lot of team\trust building exercises.  The workshop teaches everything else but to actJ, at no point of time you will be instructed to express your emotions in various styles.  Ranji calls himself a facilitator, is active part of all exercises, and closely works with teams to break the barriers of fear.  One essential aspect of playback theater according to me is to be more natural and dynamic.  Hence talking in mother tongues and expanding the thought process (Stretching) is highly encouraged.  Abstract and maverick thoughts rule the entire workshop, and there is so much to understand about each person that you end up learning something new every time you work with the team.

The entire batch is divided into small teams initially and on the third week, a team of 6 or 7 is made.  Each of teams will be given short stories from other team members (real life experiences) to enact and practice.  At first, it would be impossible to act without any predetermined characters and script.  Nevertheless, the whole essence of playback style will start showing up on teams by 5 week.  There is a audience show which will be organized on 6^th week.  I had acted upon a theme called “MONEY”

Shall next write on the key management lessons I learnt from the workshop.  Till then adieus!!

Glued under: Theatre