2nd APB Expo NSD Delhi Invitation

Dear APB Member,

It gives me great pleasure to invite you to the India chapter of the second Asia-Pacific Bureau meet of Drama schools at the National School of Drama, New Delhi, India. We will be hosting the 7-days long APB festival from 3^rd Jan – 9^th Jan 2011.

To enable a meaningful sharing, the festival will have two major components –

Workshops - Each school is invited to conduct a workshop for all other participants. The workshop may last upto 2hrs., and may provide a glimpse into the school’s training methodologies by conducting a series of exercises for other participants. This is a practical session, where a studio space will be provided to each school to conduct their sessions.     

Students Shows & Discussion – Each school is invited to put up a students show on any Asian text (including Indian texts). The duration of the show may be 40mins. (max.). A studio/black-box space will be made available with modern facilities (lights, sound and video-projection) for the staging of the show. The intent here is to bring together diverse and contemporary interpretations of these texts and open more ways of seeing and staging them. Each show will be followed by a Presentation-cum-discussion of the pedagogical approaches followed by the school. Respective contingent leader/faculty member may prepare a brief presentation of 20mins. about the history of their school, the present context within which it works and include an introduction to their pedagogical philosophy and training structure. This may be followed by an interactive session with all participants.

A collection of synopses of selected texts from India, translated into English, will be uploaded onto a website soon. Interested schools could have a read and select a play text, hard copies of which can be couriered as soon as is possible. Should constraints of time and resources make it difficult for the school to prepare a students’ show on an Asian text, we’d be very happy to have any other students’ show, not necessarily one based on an Asian text. I’d like to underline here that the larger intent behind the festival is for all of us to meet, discuss and share our work. I must also state here, that we will try our best to accommodate all components from all schools, but given the number of participating member-schools and the limited time-frame, we will get back to you about these details soon.

Exhibition – In addition to the two components mentioned above, we’d also like to curate an exhibition of all APB member schools. This will be on display throughout the festival. We’d be grateful if you could send us material for the same at the earliest - a brief about your school, photos of students’ works, production designs etc., anything that you’d like us to put up on display to represent your school.

NSD shall host a maximum of 8 members from each school, including students, faculty member/s and technical staff. Local hospitality (stay, food and transport) will be looked after for a period of 9 days, i.e. 2^nd Jan – 10^th Jan 2011. Airfares will have to be arranged by your school. A meeting of the Directors of Drama schools will be held on 8^th Jan 2011 from 10:00am – 1:00pm to discuss further plan of action, including the subject of Summer schools that was put up for discussion at our last meeting.

I am also very happy to announce that the closing of the APB festival will coincide with the beginning of the 13^th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, International Theatre Festival of India, being held on NSD campus. All participating APB members will also be able to witness these festival productions for the last three days, from 7^th Jan – 9^th Jan 2011.

Please do confirm your participation by November 10, 2010 and send us details of your team (number of members) and other requirements (technical drawings of the show) if any, at the earliest. Meanwhile, we will be sending you a detailed schedule of the APB festival with other information in a subsequent mail.

My colleagues Ms. Kirti Jain and Mr. Amitesh Grover will be in touch with you hereafter. They can be reached at the following email id <contact.apbexpo2011@gmail.com> Please do not hesitate to contact them for any queries.

In the end, I hope that this festival may create opportunities for all schools to interact with each other in multiple ways - by way of sharing their philosophies in process in a workshop environment, in pedagogy outlined in a presentation by a faculty member and in practice in a show that each school may prepare to showcase their work in the 9-days long festival. The spirit is one of coming together, sharing, interacting and learning, something that is very essential and valuable to the teaching and practice of theatre.

We are absolutely delighted with the opportunity to host the festival and wish it a tremendous success.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Dr. Anuradha Kapur

Director

National School of Drama

1 Bahawalpur House

Bhagwan Das Road

New Delhi

India