Looking Back and Ahead

My internship with Kolkata Sanved is already in its fifth month. It doesn't really feel like five months, but at the same time, I feel like my own skills in the field of drama therapy and dance movement therapy have become stronger in comparison to what they were pre-July 08. So even if time has zoomed by, it's been a constructive kind of zooming (!). Personally, the intenship has done wonders to my sense of confidence. Not surprisingly, it has reinforced something I've always believed in -- you may think you'll be able to do something, but when you actually do it in practice, your sense of self-belief is much greater. Over the past five months, I have been given a number of opportunities to bridge that gap between thinking I can do something and going ahead and doing it. And I think that has helped in both my professional and personal growth.

In the next phase of my internship I would like to conceptualize and direct at least one short performance with either the Sanved trainers or some of the girls/boys I have been working with through Sanved's partnership programmes. That's an area I have touched upon so far (the Independence Day programme at Apne Aap, the performance for Anjali in October), but not delved into completely. It's very challenging and exciting to build concepts, develop scripts and direct performances geared towards generating human rights awareness and I hope to get an opportunity in the next year to hone these skills.

Another aspect I need to give more time to is structuring drama therapy modules for mainstream school children. I have been conducting sessions at Patha Bhavan for Class 3 and 4 children and I may begin sessions at another school for middle school students. The nature of sessions for mainstream children obviously needs to be different from those conducted for marginalized or disadvantaged children and, at the moment, my classes for the Patha Bhavan kids are more on the lines of theatre for recreation than theatre for therapy. We do team building, body-mind coordination and skit development exercises, but I'm looking at expanding the range of activities so that even if they aren't "therapeutic", they can be educational and can help channelize the energy of the kids positively/constructively. If any of you has any suggestions regarding activities I can do in this vein or books/websites I could look at for ideas, please let me know. I was so focused on planning sessions for communities with special needs that, ironically enough, my mainstream sessions aren't as fine-tuned as they can be. And I'm sure there is a lot that I can do in my mainstream classes.