At the time of my 50th birthday on 24th January 2015 I have decided to pursue three areas during the next decade as hobbies. These areas are Theatre, Motorcycling and book reading. I’m happy to share my progress made in Theatre.
After my resolution, I started exploring various options to get into theatre. Lamakaan in Banjara Hills is a hub for cultural events and also famous for its food. Various people related to arts hang around in that place. It is here that I came to know about Samahaara Theatre group and their workshops. After researching about them, I got convinced that this group can help me in getting into theatre.
So on the Telugu New Year day (Ugadi), I joined their weekend workshop. This workshop is from 10 to 12 Noon on Saturday and Sunday for eight weeks. They will teach about the basics of theatre and will make us perform a ten minutes short play in front of the instructors. I understood that theatre also demands the same skills like hard work, commitment, fitness, listening skills and also team work. I learned the basics of theatre like stage types, different areas of stage, voice modulation, structure of story etc. At the end of the 5th week, I was asked to perform a short play titled The Ketchup Bottle. While practicing with my partner I found that it is very difficult even to perform a short play. We have met daily for two hours during week days and still it was not sufficient. We forgot the last few dialogue during our final performance. Overall it was a good learning experience and made me happy.
-VSR Sastry