Theatre Lab April 13, 2009

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:
(i) Kalari payattu (the martial art form from Kerala)
(ii) Konokol (for rhythm)
(iii) 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. For details contact 26592777.