Coimbatore : For the 24 members who showed up at ‘Body (E)Scape,’ an acting workshop held at the Clusters Media Zone, at Hopes in Coimbatore, mundane routine life came to a grinding halt as a new fantasy world unfolded, courtesy ‘theatre.’
Coimbatore : For the 24 members who showed up at ‘Body (E)Scape,’ an acting workshop held at the Clusters Media Zone, at Hopes in Coimbatore, mundane routine life came to a grinding halt as a new fantasy world unfolded, courtesy ‘theatre.’
Participants hailing from various walks of life ranging from management, medicine, psychology and academics were taken through different sessions on acting by Siddhanth Sundar, a Bengaluru-based artist who was the facilitator of the two-day workshop, organised by Udalveli Arts Foundation, Coimbatore.
“The core concentrations of this workshop are theatre, drama and stage behavior where Coimbatore-based artists will be trained on stage grammars,” said Siddhanth Sundar, adding that the event was done as a part of a series of seven workshops, the third stage of which was organised on the 19th and 20th of this month.
Siddhanth Sundar said that the number of participants who attend the workshops has increased since the inception of the series. The stories which have been directed by Siddhanth Sundar have been themed on various social issues including urban poverty, sexual identity, abuse, loneliness, mother, marriage, murder and other everyday happenings, focused on inspiring the aspirants.
Outside the theatre, Siddhanth Sundar also works with films and music. With varied interests in film-making, theatre direction, singing and songwriting, he has also co-founded a hit improve comedy stage show ‘The Improve,’ and conducts the ‘Center Stage Actors Workshop.’ He currently runs a delightful theatre company, the ‘Lights off Production.’
Talking about the workshop, Dharani Dharan, actor and Coordinator of Udalveli said that the idea of the workshop was to bring the audience culture back into theatres where people sit and watch plays, and also build a big community of artists. “Be it any profession, whether painter, sculptor or singer, it does not matter in theatre which is a common platform for all artists,” reiterated Dharani Dharan. He further added that at the end of the seven sessions of the workshop, there will be a collection of various plays. Hoping to see a rise in the number of plays after the workshop with the help of active participation of the artists, Dharani Dharan opined that they have planned to stage all the plays, every week in Coimbatore, by the end of 2019.
Despite hailing from different fields, participants of the workshop feel united under one roof, glued together by their passion where everyone feels their souls are happy. They feel that there is no one here to judge as theatre makes artists learn to act neutral. “People here carry an empty state of mind and everyone stays blank. This helps to shape everyone in a proper way,” says Archana, a student theatre artist.
Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasies about the world we aspire for. We must all do ‘theatre,’ to find out who we are and to discover who we could become is the echoing sentiment of all those at the workshop.