Some of the guest at Aarohi O-campus choose ‘fear’ as a topic for thought club. We used theater as a medium to watch fear. We began with what is fear? Kids and adults together acted on ‘unknown, uncertain, imaginary, absence of light, uncertain…’. The acting made the whole ‘fear’ fun. Kids and adults both expressed how the fear is imaginary, sometimes it aggravates in the dark…how each one try different things to understand fear, overcome fear and also be with fear.
Often we are fearful about fear in our children.
- We reject…..”no need to be fearful, its only dark”.
- Or we bring our own experience “I was fearful a a child, I do not want my child to be fearful” we push our children to “be brave”.
- We take in our hands….the though that the child is fearful, we start removing all things which creates fear for our child or we start protecting our ids in fear of not making them fearful.
Theater allows time to understand fear. Not try to resolve it, not run away from it, not react to itbut to understand it. There is nothing wrong or right about fear. Also fear is not about what you are fearful about. So lets say I am fearful about a person or a situation or a phenomenon (say heights) – it is not that there is anything wrong with that person or with situation or with the phenomenon. But fear is about me. And fear is inside me and hence I need to look inside me and understand myself and the fear. And once I understand and accept my fear, I realize that it absolves itself. It need not go away, but it does not bind or constrain me also. In fact it helps me.
I find theater a great medium to understand emotions and give it a different meaning. Often theater is restricted to ‘acting’ and ‘stage’. If we look at it its a powerful medium and does not need to wait for a performance. I find kids enjoying any form of theater, specially if it is interactive. We can do this at home and do it daily – just take a theme, share or read and just act. We do a lot and kids enjoy.