How Drama School Mumbai is using the digital medium to reach people across India

The Covid19 pandemic has forced most performing arts venues and schools to focus on an online approach and with Mumbai experiencing its second wave of cases it has only giving a boost to the digital medium The Drama School Mumbai cofounded by Jehan Manekshaw Maneesh Verma and Hetal Varia has started the Eklavya Online School of Drama for theatre aspirants who do not have easy access to drama schools around the country and so they can attend them from the comfort of their homes The costeffective elearning programme with its acting and theatre courses will involve rigorous training experiences by top faculty from the Drama School Mumbai accessible to all its participants in different regional languages starting with HindiHere are excerpts from the interview with Jehan Manekshaw about the new initiativeNP What led to the creation of the Eklavya Online School of Drama With the ongoing Covid19 pandemic what role do you think Eklavya plays for aspiring artistes all around the country JMLast year the Drama School Mumbai had 3000 strong expressions of interest from 43 cities across the country people who had strong dreams and a desire to learn to become an actor to pursue their creative sides However only 130 applied to our main courses The reasons ranged from fees we have scholarships to the time commitment the confidence mujh main hai ki nahin the intimidation of going into an industry they didnt know about and the uncertainty of the career mainly from parents who did not want their kids to take such huge risks When we started looking at how digital learning was taking off we realised that most formats out there were knowledgebased learning and the experiential learning stuck to things like yoga dance etc But for performing arts drama there was no format out there So we designed Ekalavya from the ground up to deliver formal training in theatres via the online medium This programme will give all those 3000 and more who did not apply a chance and opportunity to try these things for themselves in smaller easy to manage units of teaching and build their confidence and capability with which to take the big leap eventually to a big metro like Mumbai to for further training and a career like all our other successful alumni at the DSMNP What are the different courses available and what is the duration of the courses in a day and entirelyJM From a free 10hour course called Finding Characters to learning about Mastering Monologues and learning how to use your voice speech and body to express yourself better there is a bundle of eight courses You can explore them and the amazing faculty here httpsekalavyaartourprogrammeThey together become a fundamental set of chapters in the lsquotextbookrsquo on how to prepare to be an actor Each course will require about 810 hours of activity from the student in order to master it They should do it over two or three weeks and keep coming back to the activities and exercises as you know practice makes it perfectJehan ManekshawNP With the target audience being in tier2 tier3 cities what are the different regional languages the courses will be available in for participants JM We are starting these courses in Hindi but will work with other regional artists to deliver the courses in Telugu Kannada Tamil Malayalam etc We hope to go for each major Indian language one at a time over the next year or two NP How do you think theatre has changed in the last one year due to the Covid19 pandemicJM The live spaces have entirely gone silent and are now coming back at a fraction of their activity but the theatre community has really improvised and evolved in many ways to see how they can still bring their talent abilities and stories to audiences through digital formats during lockdown This is an ongoing and new journey of discovery and it has just begunNP While there are many courses available for nonperforming arts today do you think the Covid19 has given a boost to online theatre training that may have never been imagined before JM The Drama School Mumbai managed to get its main oneyear advanced training course online for the committed professional actors We have students from across the country signing in and even one from Canada Faculty from all over the world have come to teach Its all amazing and new at this point The access the potential for cross collaboration the ideas and techniques and ways of thinking about performance theatre making and storytelling that are now available to us almost immediately with time zones being the only minor challenge its an exciting time for theatretraining and as I mentioned earlier we are only beginning to understand what this can be The DSM and Ekalavya going forward prideswill pride itself on bringing best practices from all over the world to our students This has just made it that much easier to do so