Purpose of Dramebaazi is to get children introduced to various art forms: Ramanjit Kaur

Tell us about Dramebaazi.

Dramebaazi - Children's Theatre Carnival was launched by The Creative Arts and FACES (Imran Zaki) in 2018. It is one of its kind children's carnival celebrating arts. There were various kinds of performances, workshops and art installations that happened. It had great success in terms of children's participation, as huge number of children from various schools of Calcutta participated. Special Guests from different fields, including Consul General, Japan; Deputy Consul General, Germany; Regional Director, ICCR and many other dignitaries, attended the carnival. And we were deeply touched that the guests, the audience and the media equally commended the event. Once again, this year Dramebaazi Season 2 will be held on Apr 27, from 10 am to 7 pm, in collaboration with Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Kolkata.

How has been the preparations?

The curation planning and then scheduling all the workshops has been very exciting. I am very excited to be able to get Master Artists from Purulia for mask making, from Kerala for Kallari, for Pattachitra from Midnapore. The highlight is the one of most popular millenial poetry channel 'UnErase Poetry' from Mumbai, with its founder Simar Singh and Ramneek Singh. We feel touched by senior Master Artists of the city like Pt. Tanmoy Bose and Jimmy Tangree from Friends FM to come on board to give workshops to children. The rehearsals of  performances and the special workshops for  kids, by these artists and also the young musicians on RAP, acapella and beat boxing has been quite overwhelming.

Who are the performers? How challenging is it?

The performers are children from 5 to 17 years. It is always challenging to get children away from tuitions and studies and bring them for rehearsals. We must realise that it is experiences like these seeped deeply in the arts that make a person enriched. We also wanted a spirit of inclusiveness. Hence, we have invited various organisations working with or for children to showcase their work. Also, it has been challenging to fit all the workshops and performances within the schedule, with least number of clashes of age, time or space. One has to think of so many criterias of Participants, performers and the audience while curating something of such a scale.

Briefly state how you came across the idea of Dramebaazi.

The idea came from the thought of celebrating arts. The Carnival is a one day celebration of visual and performing arts to get children introduced to various art forms, that too by Master Artists themselves.