Musical Puppet Show “The Learning Factory” towards Inclusion in Education

Keeping the vision and mission of Trinayani in mind, we wanted to urge educators to question their policies on Inclusive Education and respect for Diversity and wished to share the message of equality to students through the playful yet powerful medium of Puppetry.

 

We curated an English musical puppet play “The Learning Factory” on Diversity and Inclusion based on the popular fable ‘The Animal School’ by George Reavis in 2019, wherein the animals make common rules for all and later realize that a school with the same rules for all students is dysfunctional since every student has different strengths and they cannot be forced into fixed categories.

 

Producing and staging the show was made possible by the gracious and able support of team MUKTANGAN, run by Muktangan Education Trust.

 

We premiered the show at Godrej Dance Theatre NCPA on the 15th of February 2019, with 2 shows at 4 pm and 6 pm respectively. We had 43 teacher trainees from Hashu Advani College of Special Education, 32 B.Ed students from the Department of Special Education, SNDT University, teachers from Muktangan, Anganwadi workers and staff from various branches of YWCA. 60 students of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Colaba, teachers from the Maharashtra Dyslexia Association and the general public attended these 2 shows.

 

Since then we have been regularly offering and performing the show for schools and the public in Mumbai. Here is the link to the promo https://youtu.be/uUp63jzwczI

 

The show puts a strong front about the fact that not everyone has the same amount or kind of ability. Some people can be different from others and that, in any way, does not imply that they cannot be acknowledged.

 

Live musical narration and synchronised puppetry helped rekindle the imagination of the younger generation and allowed us to continue the legacy of our age-old techniques, protecting them from extinction.
Coverage on Newzhook, India’s 1st accessible news app https://newzhook.com/story/21270

 

 

We thank the Takshila Educational Society (TES) for sharing The Animal School script and the songs. The play was adapted for the stage by Mr Deepak Morris. We had Ms Charu Prasad from Iris Creative Education and Ms Sudipta Mukherjee Mandal from Meeraki, professional puppeteers training our team of puppeteers. They also designed and created the 13 Marionettes representing 13 animal characters.

YWCA, Asha Sadan, Andheri West, graciously provided us with their venue for our rehearsals.

 

For the first seven shows our team of puppeteers comprised of Yojana Wavikar, Shaifa Shaikh, Shaikh Saba, Chitra Shirke, Shubhada Pawar. Later, Uzma, Mehak and Ayesha were trained to join us for the seventh show. Our current team comprises of Yojana, Chitra Shubhada, Kimaya Wavikar,  Sonal Rai and Ritika Sahni.

 

 

The songs were orchestrated by Joy Raha, background music by Arun Krishnan, voices and vocals were dubbed at Boom Boom Studio, recorded by Shridhar Nagraj and mixed by engineer Aman Moraney at Flying Carpet Production.
We are thankful to our friends who lent their voices to bring the puppets to life. Piloo Vidyarthi arranged and coordinated the dubbing and also played the character of the Fish. We thank Mahua Ray, Ashish Kolwadkar, Shridhar Nagraj, Sudipta Mukherjee Mandal, Meera Mandal, Chayan Gupta, Soumya Maradona Ghosh, Danika Saha, Abhijoy Gupta, Errol Rodrigues, Nitesh Kumar and celebrated actor-coach Ashish Vidyarthi for lending their voices to the character.

 

Songs were sung by Meera Mandal, Aarsha Mukherjee, Sidarth Bhat and Ritika Sahni. Thank you Archana Rao for facilitating the poster design.

Since our premiere, our travelling musical puppet play in English ‘THE LEARNING FACTORY” has performed at the below events and locations:

1. for families, children, resident staff and committee members of Asha Sadan, YWCA Andheri Branch 4th Feb 2019
2. at the Kalaghoda Arts Festival 5th Feb 2019 at M.C.Ghia Hall, as part of Resonance
4. at ADAPT Auditorium, Bandra West, for friends with and without disabilities 24th March as part of our Inclusive Monthly Meetup
5. for students and teachers of the primary section of Pragya Bodhini International School Goregaon East on 2nd April 2019
6. Beacon High School, Khar West on 4th June 2019
7. at SNDT Mini auditorium, for Department of Special Education, SNDT University, Juhu on 5th October 2019
8. for Bhartiya Vidyapeeth Agricultural College, Navi Mumbai on 7th December 2019
9. for students of grades 7 and 8 of B.D. Somani International School, Mumbai, 17th Jan 2020
10. for Teachers Task Force organized by TeachersHelpTeachers, held at Mount Litera International School, 2nd Feb 2020
11. for junior school children and parents of Mount Litera International School on the 13th of Feb 2020
12. for senior school students and teachers of Mount Litera International School on the 13th of Feb 2020
13. for all participants of the National Conference by the Dept of Special Education
SNDT University auditorium on 29th Feb 2020.

 

Future Plans We are now working on yet another edutaining Puppet Play in Hindi titled JUNGLE SCHOOL, to further the reach of the message of equality and diversity in education especially in Hindi medium schools.

 

The play has been written by Ila Joshi and Vibhav Shrivastav with expert advice from our consultant friend Dr Asmita Huddar of Hashu Advani College of Special Education.

 

 

While we will continue to perform the English play in locations, we do realize the difficulty of putting up the puppet play anywhere & everywhere, especially at out-station institutions, at an allowable or affordable cost.

 

Besides, with the recent global pandemic, after the social-distancing norms come into practice, we feel it will be quite impossible to reach this message to places where it’s needed most. We are looking at a simple BBC Teleplay kind of a format of the play, shot with three cameras under proper lighting and edited to a compressed film version, complete with subtitles, dialogues and background score.