A - Z of what to know in a THEATRE PRODUCTION
Life Online recently had the opportunity to sit down with Suranjika Bartholomeusz, Co-founder of Stagecraft: School of Musical Theatre and Performance Arts, and learn about their upcoming project.
Q COULD YOU GIVE ME A BRIEF IDEA OF WHAT STAGECRAFT IS?
Stagecraft was actually only given a name last year, but Rapti and I have been working on it together for the past 5 years. I’ve been teaching for the past 15 years myself, while Rapti has been teaching singing. We collaborated around 5 years back and last year, we finally decided that it needed a name.
We focus on the Trinity College exams but since last year, we’ve been having a whole lot of workshops just for kids on building their confidence and exposing them to drama as an outlet for creativity. Last August, we had our first workshop based on Lion King and it was a two-day session where kids went from developing their own instruments to creating their own costumes.
For Rapti and I, our whole angle has been education. She has been choir directress at HFC for a about 10 years. For me, by profession I am a lawyer, but I gave it up to teach. I see the results when working with kids and since I’ve started teaching, I have never looked back.
Q WHAT KIND OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS DO THE PLAYS YOU USUALLY DO COVER?
To me, drama has become a lot of therapy. Mental health is a big deal to me and it’s not a topic that’s not often talked about, so I try to do as much as I can to use drama as a platform
for bringing out these subjects.
It’s interesting, because the kids get more engaged and also explore areas which are not spoken about and its incredible to see how many kids are willing to talk about these issues.
I teach speech and drama separately, and those kids love to do the devised group drama which is a Trinity College exam where they have to devise their own scripts, which is really interesting. We have brought out aspects like shadow acting to mask and movement to bring out mental health. We focused on the topic of “bullying” last year. That was one group of students. My senior group looked into domestic abuse and things like the consequences of the civil war in Sri Lanka.
Q WHAT AGE GROUPS DOES STAGECRAFT CONSIDER AND DO THESE WORKSHOPS EXTEND TO PEOPLE OLDER THAN 18?
Well this year, we actually sent in our smallest batch of kids, for the “Young Performers certificate” which is for kids who have never faced an exam. Just to get a feel of things. I teach up to the diploma level.
This time, what we’re doing with the theatre project is an A-Z of theatre, which is what we like to call it because we’re covering all the aspects of a theatre production, so yes, we’ve extended the workshops to around 35 years.
Q WHAT IS THE MAIN FOCUS OF THESE WORKSHOPS?
What we find is, that sometimes kids think that the only way being involved in theatre is just being on stage. There are loads of kids who don’t like to be on stage, but like to be involved in the whole process. We want kids to know even while you build a completely different career, you can still be involved in things like theatre even in terms of sound, lighting, art and design etc.
We’re doing one play; a children’s play. The script is written by my seniors and it’s based on encouraging imagination to deal with friendship, loss etc.
So, this project we’re doing, we have quite a few kids who have enrolled currently but we would love to have a few more senior kids who could benefit from the workshops. From sound to lighting to costume design, each of these facilitators have come up with a brilliant (sort of) syllabus, to teach the kids a technique. Of course, all these kids will be the ones doing the production. They come for the workshops and the facilitators will guide them and they will be the ones putting on the show.
We have Vishan Gunawardena doing costumes, teaching his techniques and just showing us how he works. We also want to bring in concepts such as upcycling, trying to make do with what we have in terms of supplies for costumes, showing people that you don’t need to spend so much money on creating costume pieces.
Q WHO ELSE WILL BE CONDUCTING THE WORKSHOPS?
Lighting design will be conducted by Priyanka Holsinger, Sound will be done by Akhry Ameer, Art and Design will be done by Dillai Joseph, Charith de Silva will be doing Props, Buddhi Gallappathi will be doing make up, Dimitri Crusz will be handling the Videography and Darrell
Bartholomeusz will be conducting the Photography workshops. Every single one of them immediately accepted because of the educational aspect. What they also feel is that people do not know that there are all these elements to a theatre production. From Backstage to Front-of-house, no one really knows how it works.
Q WHEN DO THE WORKSHOPS START?
The workshops begin on the 23rd of September 2019. The production will be on the 28th and 29th of February 2020 at the Namelmalini Punchi Theatre. So, the organising, workshops and rehearsals will take place from September right up until February. The workshops won’t be weekly, they’re spread out because of the busy schedules of both the kids and the facilitators. The workshops will be two hours long with a round five to six workshops for each area. Within those workshops, they will learn to do the lighting according to the script and things like that. Costume design will definitely have more workshops, because there will be more work to do in that area. To sign up, or for more information, call 0773071987 (Rapti), 0772278878 (Suranjika) or 0710492133 (Chethana). It’s a limited intake, so don’t miss out!
“You don’t always get the opportunity to write an entire script and see it come to life.” We’re doing one play; a children’s play. The script is written by my seniors and it’s based on encouraging imagination to deal with friendship, loss etc.