This exciting US-Afghan-Indian three-country project, led by Bond Street Theatre in collaboration with Exile Theatre of Afghanistan and Purvabhyas Theatre of India brings…

• performances and theatre-based education to disadvantaged children in rural and urban areas of India,
• arts-based training for teachers, and
• artistic exchange with local theatre artists.
  The two-year project (2006-2008) is funded by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and other generous donors.

WHY INDIA:
India has thriving theatre traditions and strong community support for the performing arts. The arts are widely used in education and community development, practices that are still very new in Afghanistan and can be looked at as a model.

Theatre is an ideal medium for bringing essential information to rural or poor communities or those with predominantly illiterate populations and little access to electronic media. Information about health issues, fuel vouchers, or new agricultural methods can be easily depicted and described through theatre.

Following the project in India, the groups will bring these social theatre practices to Afghanistan – to benefit children, to introduce theatre as a teaching tool for educators, and help assist local communities.

India is providing a central location for the South Asian Social Theatre Institute, a new center for artists interested in social theatre practices to collaborate and work cross-culturally. The Center is being established by Bond Street Theatre in partnership with UNICEF and the Gandhi Center in New Delhi, and provides a lasting bridge of support between South Asian countries.

Part 1

Part 2

Overall, in Spring 2008:

· We conducted over 100 hours of workshops with 350 children, adults, artists and teachers.
· We collaborated with actors and directors from 7 theatre companies and 2 film companies.
· Feature articles appeared in at least 6 newspapers, plus 2 magazines and 2 radio interviews.
· Our programs directly reached at least 6,000 people plus the wide reaches of the media.

On our latest trip to India, between January and June 2008, Bond Street Theatre worked with underserved communities in New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh (Lucknow), Jammu & Kashmir, and Rajashthan (Jaipur). Our confidence-building workshops and uplifting performances are greatly needed in these communities, which rarely receive attention, services or education.

In New Delhi, we worked with young girls in the Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin area, a poor Muslim area, with congested streets, little sanitation, poor water supply, and lack of health facilities. We offered the girls enjoyable theatre-based activities to build self-esteem, stimulate creative thinking, concentration and problem-solving skills, and provide a safe environment for self-expression.

We also conducted theatre-based skills workshops for college students at Janki Devi Memorial College and Jamia Millia Islamia University.

In the politically volatile, conservative Muslim area of Anantnag, Kashmir, we worked with The Froebel School to encourage self expression and creative thinking for the students.

We also performed our production A Kite’s Tale in many of these areas, providing entertainment and laughter to deeply poor and neglected communities.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2007:

• “Experiments with Theatre,” a performance created with 50 vocational students and 8 street-working children, most of whom were on stage for the first time. Students performed short pieces which they had created in the workshops. A parent told us after the show, “I have never seen my child so strong and confident!”

• Workshops for the famed Patachitra painter-storytellers of West Bengal who practice a traditional folk form of singing stories depicted on painted scrolls. The team presented them with many ways to improve their presentations while keeping their tradition intact, as a way to boost their local economy which is based on sales of their art work.

• Workshops for women in the rural villages of Brindiban in northern Bihar. The women here were so shy that we were convinced no one would return, but the next day the class had doubled! We taught all manners of self-expression through song, dance and acting, and confidence-boosting techniques such as stilt-walking and balances.

• Mask-making and physical expression for 30 children from the violence-ridden area of Bastar in central India. These refugee children have been traumatized by years of rebel uprisings, and our workshops moved from liberating games to image-making relating to their emotions.

• In total, our programs directly reached at least 10,000 people, plus the broad reaches of the media.

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