Students perform at a drama festival in Guwahati. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, June 26: Schoolchildren with a passion for acting could be heading straight from the classroom to the stage this summer vacation.

National award winner Baharul Islam, a colossus of theatre, has volunteered to teach aspiring actors the basics of stagecraft when their institutions close for the summer.

The fortnight-long drama workshop organised by Seagull Theatre Academy gets under way in Guwahati on July 1, the very first day of the summer vacation in most schools.

Islam is a recipient of the Manohar Singh Award, instituted by the National School of Drama, for his pioneering work in theatre. Assisting him in conducting the workshop for children will be his actor wife Bhagirathi, who is from Karnataka. Bhagirathi won a national award for her role in the Assamese film Adajya.

The opportunity to learn about acting from two acknowledged masters of the craft has excited not just students, but their parents, too.

Ankita Choudhury, whose eight-year-old son has enrolled for the workshop, said she was glad that children were being offered the chance to do something other than the mundane. ?Children need something beyond school and play. And drama is the ideal tonic for both body and mind.?

Bhagirathi said ?enthusiastic parents? were regularly enquiring about the course. ?Though our workshop will be only for 15 days, the stage can be an addiction and those who have an affinity for it will certainly come back to learn more when time permits. In any case, our aim is to encourage art in a manner that gives children a respite from classroom lessons, which can become tedious.?

The workshop will include preliminary lessons in acting, singing, dancing, rhythm, voice modulation, stage presence, lighting and other aspects of stagecraft.

The workshop, open to anyone in the age group 6-14, will be conducted at the auditorium of Seagull Theatre Academy. A play will be staged at the same venue after the conclusion of the course. ?We will select a play on the basis of the trainees? interest and capabilities,? Bhagirathi said.

Islam and Bhagirathi formed Seagull Theatre Academy in 1990. Bhagirathi is the principal of the organisation, which specialises in experimental theatre and has wowed audiences at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav ? organised by the Delhi-based National School of Drama ? Prithvi Festival in Mumbai and Sangeet Natak Akademi festivals in Guwahati, Delhi and Hyderabad.