Bhanuprakash

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will engage eighth-grade students of the Government Higher School, Kadagattur in Madhugiri taluk, Tumakuru district. This 15-month project, Sunna Sonne Vaddi Baddi—a theatre experiment in language arts, addresses the linguistic challenges of the students through three key areas: voice modulations, reading and writing. Bhanuprakash is the Project Coordinator for this foundation project. 

Having 15 years of teaching experience, Bhanuprakash a photographer and a drama teacher graduated from Ninasam. He is also a master resource person at various trainings organised by the Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT) in engaging teachers for drama in education. His training at the National School of Drama, Bangalore has opened new ways for him to engage in the field of Theatre-in-Education. Through Makkalavavani's YouTube channel from DSERT, he contributed to shaping state-level online classes for students of rural Karnataka during the pandemic time. After school hours he has directed two plays, Shri Rama Rajyabhisheka and Maanadhana Suyyodhana for Madhugiri Arts Institute. As a photographer, Bhanuprakash has engaged in documentation work for Doordarshan Kalaburagi and ETV Kannada TV channels. Given his experience, he is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. 

Language plays a role in facilitating theatre, and theatre in turn can serve as an educational tool for furthering the understanding of many different linguistic challenges in a classroom. Around the school in Kadagattur, a town that shares the border between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, one can see that most of the families are more comfortable speaking Telugu than Kannada. Even if we try to communicate in Kannada, they frame their responses in Telugu. So, their colloquial accents sometimes create misrepresentation of words, like Sonne (zero in Kannada), is shared as Sunna (lime in Kannada), and Baddi (interest in Kannada) as Vaddi (nomadic in Kannada). Therefore, the project aims to find a solution for the dialectal problems that teachers encounter in classrooms. This project is the culmination of two passions for Bhanuprakash: theatre and language.

During the first phase of the project, Bhanuprakash will work on constructing plays and writing skits that include colloquialisms, idiomatic phrases and slang words. Students will be supplied with a copy of the selected text in Kannada and Telugu, to be studied in the classroom before the performance of the play. Performances will be undertaken by the resource persons from the pool of native-speaking actors, singers and language experts. These performances will serve as a learning resource for students who are experiencing language problems; and will encourage curiosity and the natural learning abilities of students.

In the second phase of the project, Bhanuprakash will undertake readings of plays Panjara Shale, Kindari Jogi, Nanna Gopala, Ajji Kathe etc. with appropriate voice modulations.  Later the student will be asked to recreate this. In this process, the reading of known Telugu scripts will also take place. These processes allow children to experience the richness of both languages. Bhanuprakash believes this project provides an opportunity for students to enhance their creativity and embark on a journey of personal growth through collaborative engagement in a shared way. This collective effort will result in significant improvements in communication abilities among them. This project offers a natural and practical option to the educational development of students through the use of theatre techniques.

Being a drama teacher, Bhanuprakash aims to incorporate traditional theatre warm-up techniques, preparing students both vocally and physically before engaging in spoken activities. These exercises will foster group cohesion and forge bonds of solidarity and friendship among them.

The outcome of the project will be a series of performances in the school. Bhanuprakash is the Project Coordinator for this project. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be photographs and the video documentation of the entire project.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Education programme in the manner in which it attempts to connect students and schools to the cultural knowledge of the local communities they live in. 

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens promptly and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.