Theatre and children. This has been The Creative Arts’ primary focus for the last fifteen years. And for fifteen years, The Creative Arts has been imparting a theatre education to children of Kolkata from the ages of 5 to 16 in a holistic, child-friendly and in-depth manner. Part of that education has been annual productions, showcasing new skills learned and important issues that were discussed in class. Our plays have focused on topics ranging from peer pressure to the Sunderbans to the refugee crisis. Then, there have been plays based upon a new way of looking at classical texts, from Tagore to Shakespeare.

And so, another year full of fun and learning has passed. It’s been a long journey and the road ahead lay untraveled. Where do we go? What do we do? A play like always, or something different?

Different, of course!

And, in quintessential TCA style, what began as an idea to showcase the talents of two of  the batches, quickly snowballed into a full-blown festival involving not just all the student batches, but even ex-students and parents and friends!

The last month at TCA has been an incredible hub of creativity – with students from one batch directing students in another, with students writing and enacting their own solo pieces, with the students in charge of production making copious notes and designing stage settings, costumes and picking the right music. That’s right, full-scale Dramebaazi!

Add to that, number of workshops and events like Puppetry, Mask-Making, Communication Skills, Creative Movement, Martial Arts, Story Telling etc. Open Mic for other children to showcase their talent and Showtime for parents and children to perform together.

A carnival of this scale can only be brought to life with a wonderful and dedicated team, and TCA definitely has one of the best. With a highly creative facilitator and director like Baisali Chatterjee Dutt. With loyal troubadours such as Vineeta Bothra Abhani, Priyal Loyalka, Parammeet Shergill, Sonia Dhir, Aarti Daga, Pragya Gupta and Anita Khandelwal around, there was no dream that could not be turned into a reality. And at the helm of it all, the one dreaming the impossible dreams and making us dream them in turn, is the ringmaster, the one and only Ramanjit Kaur, without whom this carnival would just have remained a scribble on a notepad, a twinkle in our eye.

But, as always, the true showstoppers are, and always will be, our crazily talented bunch of stars – our children!