TEACHING OF INDIAN DRAMA THROUGH INNOVATIVE ACTIVITIES IN A CLASSROOM OF FOREIGN STUDENTS: THE NATURE OF TEACHER/PARTICIPANT COLLABORATION

Abstract

The teaching of drama is considered to be one of the most momentous and exciting areas in a classroom. Various innovative classroom activities can be used to make the teaching of drama enjoyable and enthralling. The practice of innovative classroom activities ascertains advantageous in a classroom where the students are not much accustomed to the dramaturge and her/his cultural experience. The manuscript puts forward various innovative classroom activities that can be used whilst teaching Indian drama to the undergraduates with foreign background. Girish Karnad is a notable Indian dramatist whose considerable works have suggestively added to the rich tradition of Indian theatre. The dramas are Karnad’s courageous and effective experimentation on folk subjects. The present paper makes an endeavour to set forth innovative classroom activities for the teaching of Karnad’s play, Hayavadana (1971). The innovative classroom activities enrich students’ understanding and conception of the play. They stimulate students’ curiosity and support them to contribute to the classroom activities. The innovative classroom activities nurture a spirited awareness of contribution by the students. In short, the innovative classroom activities encourage students to enthusiastically contribute in diverse classroom activities and gear up their scholarship. Hence the paper endeavours to confirm how the innovative classroom activities improve and strengthen students’ understanding and appreciation of Karnad’s Hayavadana (1971).The paper sets forward the inventive classroom activities that are particularly planned for teaching Karnad’s Hayavadana (1971). The new classroom activities provide openings to instructors to teach the play ingeniously. They encourage independent and imaginative views on the part of students. They invigorate the discussion and motivate students’ creativity and vision.The article incorporates a real evidence of the teacher-in-role approach and a dialogue. The approach of applied theatre has been employed in which the participants, jointly with the facilitator, participate in the co-construction of the story. As a theatrical practice, it reassures intercession of implication through the activity of skill and contemplation. In this exposé, I suggest on the nature of the concerted progression between teacher and participants, representing my involvement in Approaches to Theatre in Semester 1 at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom in 2014-2015. As my supervisor got Karnad’s Hayavadna (1971) on the module and I was doing my PhD on Indian and Nigerian theatre, therefore, I was informally involved in the teaching lectures, seminars, and theatrical activities. I worked with three cohorts of undergraduate students from different parts of the world. I here draw on classroom records to show the central dramatic approach of the method: “teacher-in-role”. I present the stratagem, situate it in a theoretical framework and discourse problems and suggestions when teaching is utilized to involve, rather than to feed.