Today we did our last big school performance, concluding the first stage of the Yak Pack Theatre Project.
Highlander School is based just outside Kaza. It’s a fairly small school of about 60 children up to age 10, about 20 of whom are boarders. The boarders range in age from 10 down to about 5 years old, and they live in a hostel on the outskirts of Kaza. They are looked after by a warm motherly lady who made us tea whilst we sat in the kitchen, waiting to meet the teachers a few days before our show. Small children darted in and out, pouring themselves beakers of water, and taking a biscuit or three.
The children seemed happy and contented, and the hostel buzzed with the hubbub of play.
As usual we were struck by how young the children were to be away from home, to our eyes they seem little more than toddlers. Juliette’s Mother character in ‘Jambhala’ is distraught at the idea of her child going away to the big city, but when she talked to children after the show about how their mothers feel about them being away, the children said that a good mother sends her children away to get the best education possible. The children completely accept that being away from home is part of going to school.
Highlander Schools’ roof has recently blown off and they have had to get through to the end of term using the hostel building and teachers quarters for teaching and exam space. We didn’t find this out till our meeting on Friday (the show was on Tuesday!) but luckily we managed to hire a hall in Kaza for their performance. The hiring process involved much hanging about in government offices – Ben with his smattering of Hindi and charming approach is our chosen representative for that kind of job! The man in charge of the hall was really passionate about what we’re doing and wants us to do more for the government schools, who have even less than these big schools we’ve been going to. He also allowed us to book the same hall for our last performance in Spiti, for children with special needs.
Being in a public venue rather than a school allowed us to invite a few extra people to the show. The most important among these was the Nono, the hereditary King of Spiti. Although the royal family no longer has a formal role, the Nono is a well-respected and important local figure, and his support for our project is really important. As Highlander School were delayed, we had plenty of time to chat to him before the show.
He is very forward thinking and quickly understood how the ideas of creative teaching that we are talking to teachers about can be applied to other local performers. In particular we talked about the Buchan, traditional story-telling monks who are few in number these days, their centuries long tradition becoming more tourist attraction than religious ceremony. Perhaps if the Buchan were welcomed into schools to perform their stories, the children’s education could be enriched and the Buchan could find new ways to make a living that also preserves their heritage and passes on the cultural messages that they have held for generations.
As the time ticked by waiting for the Highlander children, Ollie got his cards out and entertained the Nono with some magic tricks. Nono compared Ollie to the famous magician Dynamo, much to his delight.
Once the Highlander children arrived, we were able to start. The audience seemed to really enjoy the show. We presented the teachers with resources for the school, and wished them luck in mending the roof during their short summer holiday.
The Nono told us how much he had enjoyed the performance and offered to help us to contact the scattered families who have children with disabilities and tell them about the show on the 18th. Getting the information to these families is really challenging and having Nono’s help is going to make all the difference.
We have now performed ‘Jambhala’ to a total of 1280 schoolchildren and their teachers, 930 of whom live in Spiti. With a population of 12,500, that’s a huge number and we feel like we have really made an impact already.
We are moving on to the second phase of our Project now, which focuses on much harder to reach audiences, including retired nuns, children at monk school (monklets?), children who attend the tiny remote village schools in between helping out on the family farm, and people with disabilities. Our audiences will be smaller from now onwards and the translation will be into Spitian rather than Hindi.
We packed up quickly from our Highlander performance, and headed home in what felt suspiciously like English drizzle. Its Bennys 14th birthday today, so show time over, the rest of the day is about cake and presents !!