Shishir Upreti as the panel facilitator will have in-depth conversation with 2 education stakeholders and 2 theatre scholars exploring the possible horizon of theatre education and its challenges in Nepal, which is yet to develop into any university courses. Veteran theatre scholars Abhi Subedi and Shiva Rijal will panel this session together with the dean of TU Kusum Shakya and director of Curriculum Development Centre Khilanath
Khmer Community Development, a Phnom-Penh based NGO in Cambodia, is bringing a presentation on Forum Theatre for personal and group empowerment in communities in Cambodia. The goal of Forum Theatre is to encourage social change through promoting empathy between different social groups. In Cambodia, this approach has been used by KCD to empower communities, including minority groups and youth; teach them to express themselves and address their personal challenges, build understandings for each other.
Looking to make your theatre arts more accessible for audiences with disabilites? Then this is the event for you! Join us as we explore how to make theatre arts more inclusive for everyone.
Sagar Prasai, Founder of Diverse Patterns, strategic partner of NITFest 2022, will lead a workshop with Ms. Michelle Rolfe, an expert from the UK (Birds of Paradise, a theatre group based in Scotland) on providing hands-on and practical information to participants so that they can include persons with disabilities as their audiences or artist & crew.
The workshop will be 2 hours long, and the participants will be primarily theatre directors, arts managers, and organizers of another similar festival. We'll discuss everything from stage design and acoustics to sign language interpretation and assistive listening devices. All are welcome, so come and learn how to make your theatre arts more accessible for all!
Facilitators:
Mr. Sagar Prasai has more than a decade long experience in disability inclusion sector. He has worked with national and international organizations to make thier programming accessible to larger audiences including persons with disabilities.
Ms. Michelle Rolfe is a producer for Birds of Paradise (BOP) where she works with the executive Producer and artistic director on delivering BOP Theatre productions. She ensures the smooth running of day to day activities and communications for all of BOP productions and also support the development and strategic strands of BOP through project work and delivering training.
A participatory theatre initiative facilitating sexual assault prevention. Utilizing trauma-informed and research based practice, this play blends Drama Therapy and Theatre of the Oppressed (bystander intervention) with Shadow techniques.
A story of a girl who, having remained for the eldest during the absence of her parents, is so carried away by the freedom that has opened up to her that she forgets about her younger brother. The play is socially significant.
A participatory theatre initiative facilitating sexual assault prevention. Utilizing trauma-informed and research based practice, this play blends Drama Therapy and Theatre of the Oppressed (bystander intervention) with Shadow techniques.
About the performance
Playback theatre is used in various contexts from purely performative formats to conflict resolution, and peace-building, and from engagement through dialogue and discourse to understand and work through the issues of representation. The roots of playback theatre are in theatre, rituals, community storytelling, psychodrama, and education. It was first developed by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas with a group of performers in Hudson Valley, in 1975. It is practiced in scores of countries around the world.
We believe that a playback performance for the Nepal International Theater Festival would be a great way for the audience to co-create an experience of being a part of this space that houses diversity across borders. Given that our team is a mix of different cultures and nationalities we believe this will be a unique experience for the audience to share stories with us and have them played back.
The theme of our play ‘Together and Alone’ is an ode to the resilience that each of us showed during the time of the ongoing pandemic. Through our performance, we aim to be witnesses of stories that capture the essence of solitude, resilience, unity, pain, love, loss, and a range of varied emotions that folks have been experiencing during these unpredictable times. As playback performance invites stories from all walks of life we believe our performance would be a transformative experience for the audience in order to visualize how they’ve been feeling to organically witnessing them in artistic representations. While the aim of a playback theater performance is not to advocate itself as a therapeutic tool, we believe that bringing this platform to this year’s Festival would be a much-needed cathartic experience for all audiences.
Synopsis of show
Playback theatre is an improvisational form of community theatre where we invite the community/ audience to share real-life, first-person feelings and stories to be played-back theatrically, along with music, movement, and metaphor. Though usually done live in an intimate physical space, it is, since early 2020, practiced and performed online due to the pandemic.
In this performance, we will invite you to share your stories with us and we will perform these stories back to you by co-creating a space of listening, sharing, and performing. A performance usually begins with short feelings/emotion-based questions asked by the conductor, who is the link between the audience and the performers and progresses to longer questions that asks audience members about their real-life stories that they are inspired to share in that moment and time. A performance goes on for about 90 minutes. These performances will center on empathetic listening to the stories, creating connections between the attendees, and creative exploration of the stories in a manner that is resonant of social themes as well as the particularity of specific emotions nesting in those stories.
Director's note/Playbacker's note
Together and Alone in these trying times, we witnessed people isolating themselves
Together and Alone in these times, we found democracies breakdown step by step
Of wars that were waged despite a global outbreak
Of climate catastrophes that unfolded in front of your eyes
Of stories that happened inside closed doors that never came out
And amidst all of this
Together and Alone we witnessed communities coming together in solidarity
For truth
For justice
For peace
In these testing times encountering isolation and at the same time also finding unity and togetherness have been plenty. Together and Alone is a playback theatre experience that aims to take the audience on a journey of stories that allows moments of self-reflection and sharing. With everything happening around us globally, we believe an afternoon of a playback theater performance offers a space for deep listening and reflecting. Let’s Watch!
About the Group
We are currently an unregistered group named Enroute KTM/BLR and have mostly come together as an organic group for the purpose of performing for NITFEST 2022.
List of casts
Deepthi Bhaskar
Gunjan Dixit
Laxmi Priya
Akash Narendran
A musical solo performance that speaks of the receptive exploration of a body attentive to change. Tries to illuminate Change, the movement of Change, and the process of Change through a body that breathes in multiple and simultaneous rhythms, appearing in new times and spaces.
When the dichotomy of heart and mind appears on stage, simple but deep existential questions like what kind of opinions we are cultivating, why we think, etc, and tries to make the audience look back at them and notice their tiny details exploring their experiences.
A story of a girl who, having remained for the eldest during the absence of her parents, is so carried away by the freedom that has opened up to her that she forgets about her younger brother. The play is socially significant.
