Kids charm audience with their lively act

Stage fright is something that a lot people go through as kids and sometimes, even as adults. But this was not apparent in the children who recently performed at the Habitat Summer Workshop.

In collaboration with India Habitat Centre, Sarita Vohra and Nayana Sagar conducted ‘Anything...but Grimm’, a collection of fairy tales brought together to convey a powerful message, though on a very light-hearted and joyous note.

While one doesn’t sit back expecting perfection in drama, music and stage craft –all performed and prepared by children during the three-weeks workshop – the
children managed to both amaze and impress the audience at the same time.
With six-year-olds to 13-year-old participants, ‘Anything...but Grimm’ looked into the funnier side of the Grimm’s fairy tales with a contemporary twist, easily understood by a child. The confidence, the energy and the exuberance with which these children performed, made the audience feel as if the performance was the result of months of practice.

Surprisingly though, “it was just a week’s time within which these young stars made me proud,” Vohra tells Metrolife.

Fairy tales like Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella amongst others, are deeply disturbing, apart from being just fairy-tale-like and pleasing for the kids. But the way Vohra and Sagar conceptualised them with a funny and innocent angle, was praiseworthy.

“Having worked with young, school going children for a very long while, I have realised that the best way to teach a child is only through fun. The environment in which a six-year-old child is expected to learn and rehearse for the entire day cannot be very serious, or devoid of any kind of laughter,” Vohra says.

Both Sagar and Vohra artistically introduced the funny angle to all the popular fairy tales, which tickled the funny bone of both the kids and the adults, present in the audience.

Metrolife couldn’t help but admire the confidence of the performing children. There were times when children used to be so afraid of going on the stage that a tearful outburst was a regular occurrence. However, children today openly laugh if they make a mistake or miss a dialogue in the play. They are no more afraid of the many eyes watching their performance and are instead, more focussed on continuing and completing their performance with full grace and confidence.

Hailing from some of the best and popular schools of the city like, The Shri Ram School, Modern School, Barakhamba and Delhi Public School, RK Puram to name a few, these children managed to make an impact on every single person present in the audience.

Workshops and summer camps like these are probably the best way a child can spend his/her summer vacation. Along with boosting the confidence the children learn a lot about human values and the general world around them.