Parents’ Workshop
Faculty Neeraj Kabi, Mumbai
Description General theatre
Date April 24th to April 26th (Fri to Sun)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group Parents
Timings 10:00 am to 1:00 pm
Fees Rs. 1000

Workshop Contents

“If parents cannot become their children’s leader, motivator, inspiration and his/ her closest friend … somebody else will. And this is the beginning of conflict, distancing and arrogance in a child.”

The workshop is based on science and philosophy. The course technique would be to teach through a continuous series of psychological games, physical games, theatre exercises, theatre arts such as painting, music, masks, etc. so that the parents participate in mind, body and spirit to understand the workshop and apply it.

Neeraj Kabi and the Parents’ Workshop

Every year, Neeraj Kabi invites parents of the participants on the last day of his workshop. He gives a glimpse of what their children learnt in the workshop by making them do it themselves too!

And every year, we have had demands from parents for a workshop for themselves. Ranga Shankara is happy to introduce this workshop in Summer Express 2009.
Become a child again to understand your children better!

Age Group: 12 – 16 years
Faculty Yet to be decided
Description Car mechanics
Date April 16th to 18th (Thu to Sat)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 12 to 16 years as of 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1992 and before 31st March 1997
Timings 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm
Fees Rs. 750

Workshop Contents

This workshop will answer questions like; what lies beneath the hood of the car? What makes some cars faster than the others?

The ‘car mechanics’ workshop will give children all the dirt on the four-wheeled wonders and teach them a thing or two about changing tyres, unlocking a stuck steering wheel and much more!

Age Group: 12 – 16 years
Faculty Jayanth Sharma, Bangalore Photography Club
Description Basics of Photography
Date May 4th to May 6th (Mon to Wed)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 12 to 16 years as of 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1992 and before 31st March 1997
Timings 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm
Fees Rs. 750

Workshop Contents –
Its time to get ‘shutter-happy’! This workshop will give the children an insight into photography and will cover topics such as composition, framing, background, lighting and the most critical aspect of “post processing” on a computer. By the end of this workshop, children will see the world with new ‘eyes’.

About Bangalore Photography Club (BPC)
BPC started off in late 2004 with four people who met on a Yahoo group. By 2005, considering the enthusiasm in the group growing in number, it was envisioned that BPC could go long way in the field of photography. Group projects such as shoot-trips to nearby locations helped bring the members together as a team, rather than just online peers. Today, BPC is an association of more 800 members. This is an open forum where anyone could come up with ideas aligned with the vision of the club or to promote the club itself. ‘Frames of Mind’ is the annual photography exhibition which all members look forward to every year.

Age Group: 9 to 16 years

Faculty Traditional Artistes from Tanjavur
Description Rhythm through the traditional art of “Thappattam”
Date April 27th to April 30th (Mon to Thu)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 9 to 16 years as on 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1992 and before 31st March 1999
Timings 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Fees Rs. 750

Workshop Contents

Rhythm makes music flow and rhythm makes the body move. Come and explore the world of rhythm with ‘Thappattam’, a folk dance of Tamil Nadu. The children will learn not only the basics about handling and playing a ‘Thappu’ [circular drum] but also learn to appreciate rhythm and its importance in theatre and their daily lives. The beats of the drum and the movements of the body meet in unison to become an expressive dance form. There is no end to innovation with this dance and musical form and one can create music even with stainless steel plates!

Age Group: 9 to 16 years
Faculty Anju
Description Life Skills – Fixing a meal – The Fun and Health Foods Workshop
Date May 1st to May 3rd (Fri to Sun)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 9 to 16 years as on 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1992 and before 31st March 1999
Timings 10:00 am to 1:00 pm
Fees Rs. 750

Workshop Contents:

Aimed at equipping children to fix a quick meal, this workshop shows them how cooking is fun too. “Junk” food need not be bad for you after all! This workshop teaches you to make your favourite dishes using healthy ingredients.

With going away to far off lands to study or work being common in today’s world, the participants of this workshop will gratefully remember Anju Aunty for imparting skills that will help them fix a meal instead of going hungry after a long day’s work somewhere in the world!

Anju Sudarshan – The warm café lady at Ranga Shankara, Anju is famous for her culinary skills that range from making mouth-watering Akki Rotti to delicious pastas and Greek Salad. She experiments with food all the time and loves to cook and feed people.

Age Group: 7 – 9 years
Faculty Arvind Gupta
Description Science toys
Date May 4th to 7th (Mon to Thu)
Timings B1 – 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
B2 – 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group B1- 7 to 9 years as on 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1999 and before 31st March 2002
B2 – 10 to 16 years as on 1st April 2009.
Fees Rs. 1000

Workshop Contents

Children love to make dynamic toys which spin, jump, fly, twirl, and make sound. Science is best understood if a child can see the science principle in a toy. Using simple throwaway materials children will make close to 25 science toys – a cricket cap, a protractor, a spinner, sprinkler, an electric motor and many more.

About Arvind Gupta

Arvind Gupta graduated from IIT Kanpur in 1975. He won the first National Award for Science Popularisation with Children (1988). For close to 30 years, he has been making science fun for children through low-cost activities. His website, www.arvindguptatoys.com is a veritable treasure on this subject. Currently, he is working on a unique children’s science centre at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pane. He tours extensively all over India with his Science Toys workshops.

Age Group: 13 – 16 years
Faculty Neeraj Kabi, Mumbai
Description The Power of Expression — A Theatre Workshop with emphasis on Speech
Date April 13th to April 23rd (no classes on Sun, 19th April)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 13 to 16 years as on 1st April 2009 To be born on or after 1st april 1992 and before 31st march 1997
Timings 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Fees Rs. 3000

Workshop Contents

This is a workshop on self-expression that explores breathing skills, belief, emotions, clarity, projection, sound and techniques of approaching classic text pieces from literature, poetry and drama. The workshop attempts to remove the fear of speaking and inculcates a strong self-belief. It makes children realize that speech is a very powerful tool to reach out and connect to the world regardless of who you are speaking to. The workshop ultimately opens the entire vocal system and teaches the child to be one (in body and mind) with what she/he speaks, to be herself/ himself and not put on an act of speech.

About Neeraj Kabi

An actor, director and human resource trainer, Neeraj Kabi’s workshops at Ranga Shankara are much sought after. His systematic approach to workshopping, the pleasant manner in which he works with children and the individual attention he gives to every participant make his workshops an unforgettable experience. Neeraj has designed this brand new workshop for Summer Express ’09.

Neeraj Kabi is also the Founder and Director of Pravah Theatre, a group that has several productions to its credit and performs regularly all over India.

Age Group — 13 – 16 years
Faculty Jaimini Pathak and Nayantara Roy, Mumbai
Description The Truth in Fantasy — Playwriting and Acting Workshop
Date April 27th to 2nd may. (Mon to Sat)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 13 to 16 years as on 1st April 2009 To be born on or after 1st april 1992 and before 31st march 1997
Timings 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Fees Rs. 2000

Workshop Contents

Writers and Actors will be exposed to various kinds of theatrical scripts and genres. This will be facilitated by theatre games and exercises on the workshop floor. Writers will be encouraged to develop short scripts of their own and Actors will be closely involved in the process of breathing life into these scripts, in addition to the other texts chosen for the workshop.

About Jaimini Pathak

Actor, Director and Writer, Jaimini Pathak is a well-reckoned name in the Indian English Theatre circuit today. As an actor, Jaimini has delivered some remarkable performances, recent amongst which has been his solo performance in the play Mahadevbhai.

Nayantara Roy

Nayantara Roy is a young theatre actor with immense potential. Her recent work in Tukra’s Dream was much appreciated. She loves engaging with children through workshops as she feels, “Children come without any baggage – they are not bound by the complexities and principles of theatrical traditions and always ask questions!”

Age Group: 12 – 16 years

Faculty Dr. Mamta Sagar
Description The Beauty of Poetry
Date April 10th to 14th (Fri to Tue)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 12 to 16 years as of 1st April 2009. To be born on or 1st April 1992 and before 31st March 1997
Timings 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Fees Rs. 1000

Workshop Contents:

Participants play with words, meanings and musicality of the language to get an insight into the making of poetry in this workshop. The art of reading metaphors, putting a visual to words, and the relationship between theatre and poetry will be explored through examples of popular poems from all genres.

Well-known poets will be invited during the course to perform their poetry. Finally, the poems penned by the participants will be exhibited in the Ranga Shankara foyer in an evening of celebration. The kids will read/ perform their own poetry too.

About Dr. Mamta Sagar

Dr. Mamta Sagar is a well established young poet of India. She represented India at the 9th Poetry Africa Festival held in October 2005 at Durban, South Africa and in Bogota, Columbia in 2008. She has conducted poetry workshops for schools in Durban and India. Mamta is a playwright and translator too.

Age Group: 7 – 9 years

Faculty Padmavati Rao
Description Theatre Nature and I
Puppetry Workshop
Date April 6th to 11th (Mon to Sat)
Timings Batch 1 – 8:00 am to 10:00 am (Theatre, Nature and I)
Batch 2 – 10:30 am to 12:30 pm (Puppetry Workshop)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 7 to 9 years as on 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1999 and before 31st March 2002
Fees Rs. 2000

Workshop Contents

Theatre, Nature and I

This workshop takes children on a journey that sensitizes them to Nature. They will be exposed to true environmental stories of triumph. The workshop endeavours to enable children to translate environmental awareness into theatrical expressions.

Puppetry Workshop

As David Logan said, “The marvellous thrill of puppetry is that puppets by their very nature do things that are not humanly possible. This allows for the imagination to explore countless different possibilities.”

This workshop takes children through the process of creating a puppet, a character, giving a voice and a personality too. Children would be exposed to a cultural experience of telling a story through puppet theatre.

About Padmavati Rao

Padmavati Rao has anchored Ranga Shankara’s Summer Express since its inception. Extremely popular (and hence sold out within a couple of days!), Pinty Akka as she is known, works with children to help them discover themselves and their creative sides in the most fond manner. She has designed these two brand new workshops for children between 7 and 9 years of age for Summer Express 2009.

Padmavati is very actively involved with Theatre in Education and works for an educational institution in Bangalore. She is very well known for her translations (Girish Karnad’s “Bikhre Bimb” and others), and plays for children that she has directed (“Gumma Banda Gumma” and “The First Leaf”). She was Shankar Nag’s Assistant Director for Malgudi Days and has acted in several movies in Hindi and Kannada.

Age Group: 10 – 12 years

Faculty Kirtana Kumar
Description Theatre Lab
Date April 13th to 18th (Mon to Sat)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 10 to 12 years as on 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1997 and before 31 March 1999
Timings 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Fees Rs. 2000

Workshop Contents

This workshop will approach theatre in the fashion of a laboratory by working on participants’ bodies and voices, exploring their minds and ideas and experiment with devising scenes.

For body, voice and mind, three specific skills will be brought to the workshop:

 Kalari payattu (the martial art form from Kerala)
 Konokol (for rhythm)
 Shakespeare and Iambic Pentameter

One of the principle objectives of this workshop is to make classic texts, such as Shakespeare, accessible and comprehensible for children. Using the framework of Shakespeare, the workshop will work on a variety of scenes that children will enjoy, including soliloquy, dialogue and chorus.

Some examples of text we will use include:

- Puck’s last soliloquy in tetrameter from Mid Summer Night’s Dream
- The Bee duet between Katherina and Petrucchio from Taming of the Shrew
- “Friends, Romans & Countrymen” from Julius Caesar
- “Speak the speech” from Hamlet
- “These are the forgeries” – Titania’s pentametric soliloquy from Mid Summer Night’s Dream

About Kirtana Kumar

Actor and film-maker, Karana Kumar has a Master’s Degree in European Classics and American Literature. She trained and performed for six years as an actor with The Asian-American Theatre Project at The Los Angeles Theatre Centre (LATC). To support her performance, she has variously trained in Suzuki Theatre & Booth, Thang-ta, Kalaripayattu, Carnatic vocals and choral singing. She is currently studying Bharathnatayam from Shraddha Kumar, a senior student of Dr. Padma Subramaniam.
She is a trustee of Women Artists’ Group, that runs the year long Theatre Lab for children and is also the proprietor of Little Jasmine Films, Bangalore. Her dream come true is a rural Artist’s Retreat and training Centre that she has developed outside Bangalore.

Age Group: 10 – 12 years

Faculty Ram Ganesh Kamatham
Description Activity Based Theatre Workshop
Date April 6th to April 11th (Mon to Sat)
Venue Ranga Shankara
Age Group 10 to 12 years as on 1st April 2009. To be born on or after 1st April 1997 and before 31 March 1999
Timings 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Fees Rs. 2000

Workshop Contents
The participants of the workshop will explore the world of theatre through the use of movement and game-based exercises. The workshop process has a strong emphasis on creativity, co-operation, teamwork and ‘learning by doing’, with an aim to foster a sense of mutual respect in an environment that is challenging yet fun.

About Ram Ganesh Kamatham
Ram Ganesh Kamatham is among the best young playwrights of India today. A recipient of several awards and scholarships for training abroad, Ram Ganesh has created work for stage, film, radio, and video games. With a heady mix of dark humour and biting satire, his plays entertain, provoke and challenge audiences, confronting them with the problems of next generation, young urban India. His most famous works include “Dancing on Glass”, “Creeper”, and “Crab”, that he has written and directed.