It tickles kids to know Shakespeare can be fun

For years now, theatre person Kirtana Kumar has been working zealously on one sim ple project: taking Shake speare out of text books and introducing kids to the fun side of the bard. "I have been working with children and introducing them to classics -specifically Shakespeare, for a long time now. For most kids, Shakespeare is introduced through text books, where frankly, he comes across as boring.The reason I do my workshops is to ensure that they can have fun with him without having to wor ry about things like knowing Elizabethan English. It's about helping them get under the skin of the stories," says Kumar. "What's gratifying is that the kids get it. I mean who doesn't love stories about mistaken identities or a shipwreck adventure?" This Sunday, Kumar's young students, aged 8 to 14, will be presenting their own interpretations of the Bard's works in a performance titled Playing with Shakespeare. "The kids who will be performing this Sunday are students of the Comprehensive Curriculum class that I run in Infinite Soul (a farm and artists' retreat that she runs with Konarak Reddy and Kaeya Zui) every Sunday. The class is four hours long and extremely intensive because it involves a lot of physical work," says Kumar.
She lists out what's in store for the evening: "They are presenting Midsummer Night's Dream, a monologue from Two Gentlemen of Verona, a few scenes and improvization from A Comedy of Errors, Rosalind's epilogue from As You Like It, among others." The music being used in the performance is set to compositions by French composer Claude Debussy, who incidentally was a devotee of the Bard.
This performance by the group is the third such, and according to Kumar, response to previous performances from the audiences, especially kids, has been incredible. "The kids in the audience loved it. What is fun is watching how kids engage with Shakespeare. The kids love it, enjoy it in fact. It tickles them that Shakespeare can be fun and they feel empowered that they learnt something."