Vandana Vashisth conducts a session with the artistes on Wednesday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Thirty budding actors of the state are learning the ropes of acting from the graduates of National School of Drama at a workshop at Bharatiya Nritya Kala Mandir.

The 15-day workshop, which started on July 17, has been organised by the art, culture and youth affairs department in association with Bihar Sangeet Natak Akademi.

Tanwir Akhtar, the director of the workshop, said: “We have invited veterans from the National School of Drama to brush up the participants’ acting skills. We are trying to cover every possible area of acting such as voice culture, diction and speech, improvisation, style, body language, patterns of speech, text analysis and the five Ws of acting — why, where, who when, what.”

Five graduates from the NSD — Mohammad Navshad, Vinod Rai, Asif Ali, Vandana Vashisth and Manvendra Tripathi — have been assigned the responsibility to provide acting lessons to the participants.

Akhtar said: “Five days have been dedicated to each of the veterans. To make the workshop interesting, we have divided the sessions according to the choice of the participants.”

Vashisth, the creative director of the workshop, feels that budding actors in the state lack involvement. “The participants believe acting is all about dialogue delivery. We are working on areas such as style, text analysis, voice modulation and expression.”

Rishi Kumar, a member of Praveen Sanskritik Manch in Patna, said: “This is the second acting workshop in the state after 2004. The workshop is helping me improve my voice clarity and acting skills.”

Mohammad Shehanshah, a member of Samvadiya Group in Madhepura, said: “I have been deprived of the basics of acting. The elaborate sessions on acting, including voice, expression, attitude, diction and method, helped me understand the basics,” he said.

Akhtar was all praises for the participants. “I have seen a noticeable change in the body language and dialogue delivery of the participants in a week. They are taking the lessons seriously. Even during breaks, they discuss acting and the areas in which they need to improve,” he said.