Serendipity and Learning

A few weeks ago, we got an opportunity to work on an Influencing Skills workshop.  Now this is a commonly requested workshop and is run in many flavours - from communication to networking to negotiation - depending on the ask. When Madhu reached out to me, we thought how could we make it different from what is already there in the market. After a few days of intense effort, a design emerged as did a model (more on the model soon). What we worked with as the outcome was that in this day and age, many of these concepts need to be worked on differently - both from a delivery and a design standpoint. Madhu being a theatre expert - we attempted to weave in theatre concepts to bring out each element of influencing. For example, we put the team into an activity that was tough right at the start that brought out their own 'blocks' on 'influencing'. And rather than talk about it in the head - they experienced it in the activity and from there, was far more easier for them...

I had earlier blogged about the theatre learning experience through the 12 week workshop that I had attended earlier this year. The entire project culminates with a real play that is played to a real audience complete with props, costumes etc. It is hard work. 12 Sundays of training followed by a few weeks of rehearsals – nearly 5 times a week. First the trainings get you prepped up. Use your body. Use your mind. Voice. Train. Get physically fit. Handle each other. Trust. Work. Alone. Work. Together. Form, Storm and Norm ( see earlier post ). Getting the lines right is just the first part. Then the moves. Then changes. Then some variation. Then, the script gets dropped. Then you see that the entire so called play looks like people reading news. Then you work on tweaking it, until it ultimately becomes a play. All the people in the scene have to put their best foot forward. And work work work. Get the beat right. Get the rhythm right. Get the timing right down ...

SPOT stands for Summer Project On Theatre, an initiative by Bangalore Little Theatre. Each summer for nearly, the last 30 odd years, Vijay Padaki, cobbles together a set of rank amateurs - and takes them through 12 weeks of training. At the end of 12 weeks, these amateurs star in an amateur theatre production. Impossible as that may sound, he has done it - for nearly 30 years now. The fact that Vijay has done so for 30 odd years means that is safe to suggest that if anyone landed there, he can make an actor out of you. An amateur actor - and show you the gate - through which you walk in case you want to continue the pursuit of this field further. And that is what I did. Showed up on a Sunday in May to sign up for SPOT 2013. Many of my friends have been part of SPOTand have come back with amazing experiences.I myself watched a couple of their plays and found them to be quite mind blowing. Imagine that you part of a training that is also a project. Imagine that you will be taken...

We discussed this last week at a training session. The objective of the session was to imagine any object as any other object and engage with the object completely. So, I first picked a bench and imagined it to be a bicycle. Then I picked up a bag and pretended it to be a book. And then a steel tumbler as a phone and so on. In the discussion that ensued, the takeaway was not that, we believe that the tumbler is a phone, but the fact as an actor one has to make the audience believe that the tumbler is a phone. The actor who cries in a crying scene is not as good as the actor who makes the audience cry in the crying scene. And that led to the story that children find more joy in their imagination than in an actual toy. The process of making the toy builds up the imagination that is far more rewarding then mere ‘unboxing’. So, a cardboard quiver made of cardboard, double sided tape, a satin ribbon is far more fun than a plastic quiver. The cardboard quiver has de...