Workshop on Adolescent girls in Bangalore

Manju a dear friend at NIPPCD had organized a workshop related to adolescent girls and this was a review of all kinds of material available on this issue. It was three days of sheer excitement and fun from 6th to 8th October, 2008.  It was amazing to see the kind of material developed by Government, NGO, schools and Colleges related to the issue. However what we found was that most of the material related only to health aspects especially giving information on reproductive health and diseases like AIDS etc. We had a lot of discussions and then pointed out the need to create more materials on different aspects like livelihoods, violence, empowerment etc. The highlight of this workshop was the Yakshagana performed by a group primarily comprising of men on the last day. These men were dressed in beautiful costumes and with a lot of drama, music, song and dance they covered a large number of  women’s issues. Yakshagana  means  " the music of celestials" is a form of a dance drama performed predominantly in South Kanara, Malnad region and certain parts of North Kanara Districts of the State of Karnataka. It is a  400 hundred-year-old tradition. It is a combination of dance, music, spoken word and costume-makeup and stage technique. It is a typical folk form of drama , commonly performed at night on a platform-like stage in the open air with themes based on Hindu Epics like the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and mythological tales from the Puranas. As prescribed in the Natya Shastra, it has the Suthra Dhara (conductor) & the vidushaka (the Jester). here is both mystery and robustness about this form in which singing and drumming merge with dancing, and words with gestural interpretation, and players clad in costumes of striking colour and contours. In all it was a very robust performance and will stay in my mind for a long time.  It really brought home the point that any format which includes a folk format stays for a long time in the minds of the people and it was wonderful to see this group take up the issue of educations, empowerment, health, the right to take decisions for one self.  I also decided to experiment with a lot of folk forms to bring in an awareness on women’s issues.