Ms. Françoise Calvel of Layam Cultural Events and Training PVT LTD conducted a 10-day theater (drama) workshop for children from March 30 to April 10 at the Schoolkutti.com Children’s Library. The workshop provided an exciting opportunity for young performers to develop their skills.

How theater training helps kids

As well as having lots of fun using their imaginations and creating characters and stories using costumes and props, drama activities can help children learn about emotions and will help build self-confidence, improve communication skills, and develop teamwork and stage skills.

Attending theater classes help children/teenagers to respect themselves and also others. They also learn to manage their emotions and also find out how to express and practice self control. In addition, the learning of the numerous techniques of theater allows them to apprehend their body in space in a better way.

According to Ms. Françoise Calvel, the director of the play, the important aspects of acting is to understand yourself, to express your emotion, to create attitude and character. “For all that you must know how to control our body, so through several exercises, we work on body expression, clown, mask, and improvisation. Children learn that everything is coming from stomach: emotion, voice, reaction. Clown, mask and improvisation are only some techniques of performing arts.” – she says. It was interesting to note her point that the objective of theater training is not to remove shyness, but to know how to control it.

What they did

Children had fun experiencing the many aspects of theater as they developed skills and got in touch with their imagination. This is what Aysha Joyce, a participant of the workshop had to say about the camp – “We learned so many things like Attitude of a character, action and reaction, emotions, body language and a lot more. And all of us have new friends too. Thank you Françoise Calvel – A teacher with great energy and passion for theater.”

Topics Covered

The following topics were covered during the 10- day camp (2 hours per day).
– Occupation of space
– 5 senses, emotion bases
– attitude of character
– improvisation clown with dominant and dominanted
– creation of character paper mask
– how to create a story ? With action/reaction and problem.
– how to use the space, the group ?”

The camp ended with a performance for the families of children on the evening of the last day.