Does anyone have the heart to criticise
performing children? Can a child be judged for his actions? “In their case, all
is good. There is absolutely no chance to say anything, whether the performance
was good or bad. Their very effort itself is good enough,” smiles Premanand
Sangodkar, one of the judges at the Vth Children’s Tiatr Festival held recently
at the Gomant Vidya Niketan Hall, Margao.
In November-December 2014, history was
created and we will probably only know about it when this ‘star’ tiatrist gets
written about for his merit-worthy tiatristponn 10 or 15 years later, recalling
this very children’s competition as staging a debut. This Children’s Tiatr
Festival had 12 entries from Chinchinnim, Majorda, Taliegaon, Ucassaim,
Sanguem, Cortalim, Chandor, Monte-de-Guirim, Cabo-de-Rama, Pilerne and Fatorda
with about 100 performing children, apart from 2 girl musicians – a blowing
instrument and a drummer.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
The contention that supporting children or
the next gen is the only way forward by recent Nobel recipient Malala was also
adhered to by the Tiatr Academy of Goa, apart from the very many more views in
this direction. According to this recent Nobel recipient, even though many
things have gone wrong in our own times, the only way these can be set right is
by educating the children, who are the future of tomorrow. “How else will tiatr
and tiatristponn go on to entertain the remaining generations. Keeping
traditions alive can only happen through children,” maintains William
Fernandes, a blogger tiatrist and a judge at this competition.
Even while these serious issues get
tackled, for the children, can anyone deny them their child’s play? Children, as
tall as an adult’s arm, got into costumes, held microphones, pulled at wires
connecting these microphones heavier than themselves to allow them their star
space on the stage to walk by comfortably and in style between music
interludes, as taught by their mentors. “And they indulged in all of this to
entertain us and keep tiatr alive,” warmly smiles Connie M, the third judge at
this festival who also got in the mood due to the children and played the drums
along the tiatr band for the intro music piece of few tiatrs at this festival,
just to support the children.
While a lot of fun happened with the
performances of these children, as is the norm to be at such events, some of
them were exceptional with some powerful performances. And what’s more, these
children performed for the love of the stage and not with the prize in mind and
hence, took the results sportingly unlike some grown up tiatrists who are known
to shower expletives on judges when their group does not get a prize. Some
artistes are not able to accept someone better than themselves at the Kala
Academy Tiatr Competition but “there’s much to be learnt from children”. Yes,
this was the lesson from the Vth Children’s Tiatr Festival and hopefully for
this new year 2015.
Name calling and getting abusive on social
networking websites are the reality of the day at adult competitions. In
contrast, no such incidents were reported after the children’s festival. “The
lights went out leaving the entire place in darkness for few minutes thus
disrupting scenes during some performances. Then at certain instances, the
sound was way too loud while sometimes microphones failed to work; sometimes
the curtain got stuck while pulling up or down. But did you see any of the
children vociferously complain, even if the onus of controlling these technical
issues was not on the children?” questions a tiatr-goer, visibly very upset
and disappointed with adult responsibilities and reactions in this
context. But the good audience still understood and clapped for it all.
With an ever increasing crowd from onset
till end, the audiences had their fair share of entertainment, be it a cute
little person playing the role of an old person, or another cutie forgetting
his lines halfway but still braving the audiences and completing their
performances nevertheless. Efforts were rewarded with a patient audience who
clapped for everything, and will never stop clapping for promoting traditional
values in our gen next. Thank goodness for such a gracious audience.
