A perfect opportunity for aspiring actors to get their skills honed and their desire to act fulfilled, Our Theatre’s Actor Training Programme is a distinctive learning experience. An in-depth eight-month long course that kicks off on September 10, the sessions will be facilitated by Vivek Vijayakumaran, Founder and Artistic Director, Our Theatre and Abhitej Gupta.
A nine-year-old theatre company in the ooru, Our Theatre’s first drama Beyond the Land Of Hattamala was staged in 2009. With their own Work Studio in Koramangala, this year’s training programme promises to develop an actor’s presence through diverse techniques. “We discussed with last year’s participants, asked them how we can better our course and decided to have more defined timelines and timely engagement this time. This year, we plan to meet thrice a week during the weekdays, and during one of the weekends, we will have a fairly long five-hour engagement,” reveals Vivek, whose theatre company has trained and facilitated more than 30 upcoming actors with their programmes culminating into private and public showings. “Last year’s batch of actors put up a play called The Centre Cannot Hold, which is our most recent production,” shares the recipient of the Inlaks India Theatre Award whose latest work BHIMA was featured as one of the 10 best plays at META 2017.
This one-of-a-kind programme has several focus points including physical training which covers aspects like breath, core, moving with impulse and embodying text in space. Vivek reveals that the sessions will mainly comprise three things, with the first one being the craft of acting and everything to do with it. “We will also have the practice of reading plays, essays, books or some scholarly work, which we will curate. The participants have to read that particular document, make a presentation that’s as interesting as possible, so it’s all about enhancing a way of storytelling by engaging with some content,” he says. The programme also intends to be socially and politically aware by having a discussion every month about an issue of significance.
“We constantly engage with some kind of creation at any point. I’d like to keep the work very specific to the participant as everyone has a different starting point. We have two days for auditions — what I look for when auditioning participants is how much they want to be a part of the workshop and a certain amount of ability to emote. We’re looking for people who want to pursue acting seriously — it’s not like a hobby class,” says Vivek.
Those applying for Our Theatre’s actor training programme will have auditions on September 5 and 6.
