Kaivalya Plays is positioning itself as a hybrid theatre company, with a mix of online and offline cultural programs. The company is experimenting with different storytelling mediums such as online performances, audio dramas, and livestreams.
One such initiative is Improv Theatre for Language Learning focused on Hindi, English, Spanish and Punjabi. Production manager Gaurav Singh tells us more.
What led you to create these workshops?
Since the beginning of lockdown, we have been able to reach over 1,500+ participants across our various improv initiatives. We noticed an interesting trend — we had people from over 15 countries attending these Zoom events, each of whom spoke a different language but were able to connect with one another using the language of improv. Given our background in applied improv and theatre education, we became interested in exploring this linguistic angle that connected these different global diasporas and decided to offer improv jams in English first and later, in Punjabi, Hindi and Spanish. Now we have Punjabi speakers not just in India, but also from the UK, Canada and Spain. All of our sessions are open to all levels of the language — you can be a native speaker or someone who only knows a few broken words — and we only insist on a willingness to play.
Could you take us through the process?
Every language-based improv session is positioned as a fun, open-to-all space. The session, which is usually between 60 to 90 minutes, begins with a few warm-up exercises that allow participants to become comfortable with the screen. What follows next are games which allow the participant to share their knowledge of cultural themes, events, news and happenings specific to the language, and introduces elements of interactive gameplay to it. For example, a game called ‘Categories’ requires participants to successively name as many items as they can under a single category like, for example Punjabi Singers, Spanish Food items, Hindi Movies and English Idioms. These games allow the participants to express themselves comfortably in the language in everyday situations, rather than an academic approach to language learning.
Why have you specifically chosen these languages?
Kaivalya Plays has been producing performances and workshops in English, Spanish and Hindi since its inception. Our artistic director Varoon P Anand is a professional Spanish language teacher at the Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi and speaks six different languages. Our larger team speaks a multitude of languages. The Canada-based comedy collective Laal Button and Brampton Arts Council approached us to do workshops in Punjabi after attending our workshops. The same happened when a professor from the language department at Vanderbilt University (USA) attended and asked us to create bespoke sessions for their Hindi students.
Any impediments in the online sessions?
In the last six months alone, we have conducted 30+ theatre workshops, seven live performances, six digital stage productions, and one theatre fellowship program, directly reaching 1200+ people across 15 countries. Rather than an impediment, the online medium has created more accessibility to reach anyone around the world with an internet connection. We have even conducted sessions with visually impaired participants who have greater ease because they connect from their own homes and can keep themselves as safe as they want by keeping their cameras or mics off.
Details
Fifty per cent of the proceeds from Punjabiprov events in December will go to KhalsaAid in support of the farmer protests movement in India. PunjabiProv — Improv Theatre in Punjabi | Every second Sunday at 9:30pm (December 13 & 27; January 17 & 31) One ticket (Rs 300) allows entry for two, register at bit.ly/punjabiprov