Online Storytelling Workshops by Vikram Sridhar

Artkhoj in collaboration with Vikram Sridhar brings you a series of engaging and interactive online workshops on Storytelling.

12th Sept: Heritage as Stories

An engaging and interactive online workshop to explore how we can look at Heritage as a way to connect to our culture, history and environment through stories

A rich country like India has so many facets to it when we look at it as a rich heritage and not just as history. From Monuments to fauna to food to festivities, if we can look at the spectrum of our Culture from the view of heritage and stories, we can cherish and celebrate the diversity.

Through this workshop, we will look at our rich heritage in different ways and will create stories out of them to connect with our audience/readers/viewers

What will you learn through the workshop:

Heritage Vs History

360-degree view of Indian Heritage

Connecting to varied strengths of History Geography etc.

Adding life to the least loved subject for children teens and young Adults

Facets of Heritage stories

Creating a memorable Story through the Heritage lens

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18th Sept: Singing a story: The Folk Way

Every time we travel across the country or even when we sit with our previous generation, we hear them telling a story. And if we look closer, we hear them singing the story in a way that’s personal, emotional and comes from the heart. What does it take to tell a story, and more than that sing the story.

The workshop will explore a simple way to look at the tone of folk singing, and derive energy from our collective memories to create simple stories in a way that can be sung in both English and our vernacular languages. There would be simple voice-based exercises, improv story creation and the participants will have a story song by the end of the workshop

What will you learn through the workshop:

- Shifting from telling to adding a musical tone to a story

- Finding comfort with our personal folk voice 

- Appreciating an ancient tradition of singing stories 

- Tuning for a story from our authentic memory bank

- A new way to work with children and stories 

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26th Sept: Every Object Tells A Story

A space is surrounded by many things, small and big. What if they get a voice to speak?

The workshop will explore the world of objects, materials and the art of play/games to create stories and simple drama in the most impactful ways, using the items surrounding us.

A stapler for a crocodile, charging wire for a skipping rope etc is just a glimpse into the ideas. The workshop will explore the world of simple joys in performing stories using the objects around us.

What will you learn through the workshop:

The curiosity to look at objects with life

Connecting with the audience through the medium of a miniature world

Create stories that are interactive and playful

Adding life to your performances/sessions/classes

Hooking the audience/listeners to your narrative

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2nd Oct: Creating Wordless Stories

What does it take to create a story completely wordless, completely based on sounds and just using our facial muscles. We depend on our vocal vocabulary many times to convey a narrative and especially a story. What if we just have our sounds and our actions to create a story.

The workshop will explore various sound patterns, facial expressions, and simple mime-based exercises

Voice reactions and wordless responses create a narrative that’s completely wordless.

The workshop explores the possibility of sharing stories in ways that transcend our oral vocal vocabulary and tapping our body-based expressions 

What will you learn through the workshop:

- Ways to make stories wordless 

- Explore age-based adaptation of the same stories 

- Awareness towards our body based expressions

- New ways to adapt your existing story bank

- Performing to an audience who don’t connect with vocabulary-based content like specially-abled children, toddlers etc.

All the above workshops are suitable for

Teachers

Parents

Writers

Storytellers

Video Makers/Bloggers

Script Writers

Theatre Artists

Anyone who works with stories and anyone willing to learn something new.

About the Workshop:

The workshop will be conducted online through the Zoom platform.

The link to join the workshop will be shared on the day of the workshop

Anyone over the age of 16 is welcome

No prior experience is required.

About the artist:

Vikram Sridhar is a Bangalore/Chennai Performance Storyteller, Theatre Practitioner, and a Story Researcher especially folktales and Myths. Sitting behind temple elephants, nursing wounded puppies, working with various theatre groups, Vikram today combines his various interests and work over the years in his storytelling journey working with children teens and adults using Storytelling and Theatre. Through folklore and his extensive travels, he is trying to research and explore our rich heritage of oral literature through the various forms of art. He believes in storytelling as a strong medium of conservation, from nature to human relationships.

He is the co-founder of one of Bangalore’s esteemed theatre group, Tahatto and the founder of India’s first Storytelling collective, The Bangalore Storytelling Society. He is part of the organizing team of various literature based festivals like the Bangalore Literature Festival, Bengaluru Poetry Festival, Dum Dama Dum: Children theatre and Reading Festival, The BeSt ( Bengaluru Storytelling ) Festival, Kovai Bookalatta, among others.

Feel free to reach out on 8971492903 for any queries.