Amala Rai, a well known theatre artist and a reputed teacher in this art form announced her vision and mission to conduct a theatre teachers’ training programmes for individuals who are teaching theatre in schools and also for those who aspire to become theatre educators.
This training is also for those who want to learn theatre tools and skills to teach other academic subjects. This training programme can help an individual to work in schools or even start their own theatre hobby classes for children. She shared, “We facilitate Theatre Curriculum Planning, Assessment Designing, Pedagogy and Classroom Management strategies. There is a dearth of theatre teachers in our country, hence schools do not offer theatre as a subject. Therefore, theatre is not getting its deserving place in the school curricula. Unless, there is an army of theatre teachers in our country, students will remain deprived of learning theatre, which is really unfortunate and not fair.”
She further added, “Theatre teachers can be produced only when there are efficient trainers to train and prepare them to teach theatre in schools and/or use theatre as a tool of learning to teach other academic subjects effectively.”
Amala Rai, who is an alumna of National School of Drama, New Delhi, is an experienced and well-known theatre practitioner for the last four decades. She is an IB educator and theatre curriculum developer. Amala recently completed her PG degree in International Education from the University of Bath, United Kingdom, that too with merit at the age of 60. More than 100 theatre teachers have benefited by her training and now are successfully teaching theatre pan India.
Rai left the glamour and city life of Mumbai in 2020, where she was teaching in International Baccalaureate schools. She moved to a small village called Rauri of Solan district in Himachal Pradesh. Now she is a pioneer in starting a children theatre movement in her village, where she is regularly conducting children theatre workshops and mounting theatre productions with the village children.
Apart from conducting numerous offline theatre teachers’ trainings in Mumbai and Bengaluru, in last nine months Amala has conducted 8 online training sessions successfully. This is our first ever offline training programme after Covid. What could be a better way and place of learning than the lap of the Mother Nature and the Mighty Himalayas.
