SALEM SEP 6
Under The Aalamaram (UTA) a storytelling festival by KathaiKalatta, Chennai, now in its 6th year, has come to Salem for the first time.
On a mission to revive the art of storytelling to a generation obsessed with screens, international story telling experts are performing and teaching storytelling to children and adults on September 6and 7.'
According to Jeeva Ragunath, a veteran story teller, Co-Founder, KathaiKalatta, story weaving magicans Giovanni Conforto from Italy, Anna Jarret from the USA, Alton Chung from Hawaii are among the 15 international story tellers accompanying the festival team. On Friday they spread out to schools and held story sessions for kids and workshops to teach teachers and public the art and technique of story. They familiarised the participants on tools of storytelling like songs, body language, actions, observation and visualisation.
On September 7 at 4.00 pm at Sona College of Technology the festival team will tell stories to an assorted audience. “ KathaiKalata’s story telling sessions are aimed at children from kindergarten to higher secondary and the type kind of stories and format varies with the level and age of the students. History, science, culture and values are learnt by students through the medium of story but the approach is to tell stories for the joy of it and not with any explicit objective like imparting morals.The ultimate take away is strengthening of bonds and lots of learning,”says Jeeva Ragunath. The 45 minute session will include a maximum of four stories including folk and modern told in English and Tamil.
Craig Jenkins from London who has been coming to India for ten years to take part in the Under the Alamaram festival says, “I use gestures, songs and lots of action and humour so that the Indian children especially in rural areas understand what is being told”. Mable Lee a professional story teller from Singapore says she has come with a lot of folk tales to tell.
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Centre for Community Media