The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Pitching in for children’s rights through street theatre

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Monday, May 12, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Pitching in for children’s rights through street theatre

Deepa H. Ramakrishnan

“People’s participation in the play is important; only then the message will get across”

Sureshdharma

CHENNAI: Anti-Child Labour Day just passed by, and one person who has been silently making a strong case for children’s rights is Sureshdharma of the Black Theatre Group. He and his team don’t believe in stage plays. It is street theatre that is his forte. He has been using this medium to work among the youth. Sureshdharma explains the nuances of street theatre and its contribution to social development.

“It was a struggle born out of the Emergency [in 1975]. We fought to protect the democratic rights . A group of friends got together just after finishing college, and we chose street theatre as our medium of expression. It was the best thing at that point of time since we didn’t need any props, makeup or any kind of announcements. Street theatre was also in a nascent stage then in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and we grew with it,” he says.

His group works with bodies such as APAC–VHS, the International Labour Organisation and non-governmental organisations and provides training to simplify concepts and take them to the people.

“The basis, of course, for any play is that those who are making it must be convinced about the concept. Then we think how it can be shown through body language, which involves a lot of exercises for the body and voice, mime, choreography, dialogues, songs and slogans,” explains Mr.Sureshdharma.

As someone with more than 30 years in theatre, he feels people’s participation in the play is important; only then the message will get across. “One of the ways we do this is by putting a question to the audience and making them share their views…”

While Mr. Sureshdharma’s earlier plays centred on problems of farmers, workers and those discriminated against, he later switched to training children. “In the 1980s, we started the Thedal Theatre and, when I came to Chennai in 1987, I started Black Theatre. We believe that to protect rights in a democracy we need basic changes in attitude, and only children can bring it about. They can put an end to discrimination.”

Facilitating change

The long haired, bearded man, who does not hesitate to answer questions, joins hands with NGOs in the children’s parliaments. “We impart communication, analytical and critical skills and provide children with information about their rights. We create the space for them, listen to them, observe them, accept and recognise them. Our role is facilitation only.”

But he prefers participating in jathas and yatras to children’s theatre festivals. “Black Theatre is a resource group and not a performance group, and so we don’t believe in taking our plays to the stage. We instead prefer yatras. We had big yatras in 1989 and 1999. Last year, along with the ILO, we trained trade union members to stage street plays at Tirupur, Erode, Dindigul, Salem and Coimbatore. It was to sensitise employers to child labour. And it was nice to see the creative spark in the workers.”

Now his group is working on two plays: one on suicide, which is on the rise among adolescents, and the other against corporal punishment. “The one on suicide is to instil faith in life in this age group. The other play, of 9-minute duration, is by children and shows how such punishment affects their growth evelopment.”

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