Theatre for Young Adults
The Academy holds classes for young adults as well as for children. While classes are held throughout the year for children and focus on holistic development of the child’s personality, Wings for Young Adults is more acting and production oriented. Every year, the Academy selects 25-30 actors in the age group of 18 to 30 years, who undergo a month long intense theatre workshop, before starting work on a full fledged production. Barring a few students, who have been working with Wings for over a decade now, most of the selected actors are first timers from different walks of life.
The Academy has staged some memorable productions of The Night of January 16 by Ayn Rand, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Twelve Angry Jurors by Reginald Rose, August Osage County by Tracey Letts. The Academy was established to give a space for exploration to the youngsters of the region, both those who want to take up Acting as a profession and those who want to pursue theatre to explore the spiritual realm of it and find a space where they can give voice to their bottled up emotions. Many youngsters who have worked with Wings have gone on to do well in their respective professions, while some have taken up acting professionally and are slowly making their mark in the world of theatre and films.
The Junior batches at Wings Theatre Academy have students between 8 and 17 years of age, divided into several groups. Each group is assigned curriculum and lesson plans suitable to the age bracket. However, over all, the focus of the classes is to create a space and atmosphere where children can explore their talents, find expressions to their ideas, emotions, thoughts, creative juices, a space where they can move freely with the rhythms of their minds and bodies, where they can express themselves fearlessly. The curriculum is designed to provide tools that the students can use not only on stage but in their day to day lives as well. The constant work on voice, facial muscles, body language, concentration, creativity reflects in the student’s over all personality.
Students are taught the basic physiology of speech. Good speech begins with good breathing, hence the voice work starts with the breathing exercises, followed by exercises to develop control of the diaphragm. With various exercises, students are enabled to build awareness of the speech resonators like mouth, nose, chest, throat, the head. The awareness is also developed around the speech muscles like jaw, mouth, lips, tongue and the soft palate.
Once the students understand the basic physiology of speech, we move on to working towards voice projection, clarity, the use of pitch, pace, pauses, emphasis etc
There are 42 muscles on the face. A performer strives to activate as many as possible to express a range of emotions. The students are taught; how to slowly develop control over all the facial muscles and then use them in facial and vocal expressions.
The arrangement of all the facial muscles during different emotions are studied and then exercises are done to enable the students to make those arrangements effortlessly.
An Actor’s/Speaker’s thoughts, emotions, feelings and intentions become conspicuous through the eyes. In any act of communication, the listener focuses on the speaker’s eyes to gather more information than just the spoken words. Therefore developing control over the muscles around the eyes is highly beneficial.
Several eyes and gaze exercises are done with the students to work on the muscles around the eyes and to make the gaze more expressive and energetic. Such work helps not only in Acting but in communication in general.
A number of movement and body awareness exercises are done to make students move freely in space and express themselves through their bodies. This involves expression through various gestures, postures and movements.
An understanding of rhythm is developed, which enables students to express freely through the body on stage and even in real life conversations
Training in theatre involves working on the mind and body simultaneously. A well trained voice, facial muscles, gaze and body are of no use unless students get an equally arduous training in developing sharp concentration, imagination and visualisation.
A lot of meditative techniques are used for the same.
An elevated awareness and memory of the five senses helps in going through different experiences more mindfully. which in turn helps in recreating those experiences while acting on stage, writing stories or while sketching or painting.
Every artist is either blessed with a sharp awareness and memory of the sensorial experiences or develops it with training. Wings has developed a lot of elaborate exercises for the same.
With Children, there is hardly any direct teaching of the techniques of theatre. Most of the lessons are adapted into theatre games, exercises and improvisations, to make learning a lot of fun. During the course of working with children, for a decade and a half now, Wings has developed some very interesting theatre games and exercises, that facilitate the teaching of the basics of Drama, Performance and Communication. The games and exercises also keep the children excited about the classes.