In all of Kusum Ji’s Hindi classes, she makes it her mission to help engage the class in a more interactive manner than simply lecturing and giving homework assignments. Throughout my semester in Hindi 101, I have had the opportunity to take part in activities that introduced me to new aspects of Indian culture and creativity, beyond the language, such as a dance class, a poetry workshop, and, my favorite, an acting workshop.
Varoon P. Anand, the creator of a performing arts and production company called Kaivalya Plays, joined our class virtually twice this semester to teach us about improvisation and skit making. Unfortunately, I missed his first visit, but I did have the chance to thoroughly enjoy his second one.
Considering that most of the students were new to acting, Varoon started with an activity that laid a foundation for any performance. The activity taught us how to “read the room” by having us attempt to get a sense of the emotions of the others on the Zoom call. Based on our reading of the room, we were all instructed to predict what Zoom reaction emoji (sad emoji, thumbs up emoji, heart emoji, laughing emoji, etc) we thought the rest of the class was going to click. Varoon counted down from three to one, and then we all clicked the emoji we predicted. As it was our first time doing something like this, the emojis displayed were not homogeneous. Varoon explained that in acting, it is critical to get a sense of the emotions of the room in which you are performing- whether that be those you are performing with, or those you are performing for.
Varoon then had us conduct a very unique exercise in which one person claimed they were an object, and then two others in the group claimed they were objects related to the initial object. From there, one of the two ‘related’ objects lead to a new chain of objects, and the process would continue, over and over. Although we were all confused about the purpose of this exercise at first, we learned that it showed how one idea could take multiple pathways and lead to a new idea. It also showed how many different ways you could relate different objects. This correlates to acting and improvisation because it portrays how one can take a singular theme in numerous different directions. It also shows how ideas can build off of each other to create new themes, common in improvisation since the actors must feed off of each other to continue the show.
While these activities were helpful to learn more about acting and improvisation, they were also helpful in learning more about Hindi. Varoon did the entirety of his workshop in Hindi, challenging us, as Hindi beginners, to properly understand what he was saying, and respond correctly. Even as someone who has never acted, and does not particularly enjoy acting, I really appreciated Varoon’s workshop and I am grateful to Kusum Ji for providing us with the opportunity to take part in it.
Here are some comments from other students who participated:
Rithik said, "I enjoyed the practice of just trying to come up with things to say on the spot and just, in general, the fun and relaxed environment. Hopefully, as I get better at speaking Hindi, I will be able to take more advantage of the open-ended nature of the exercises. I enjoyed the newscasting segment the most.
Anu wrote, "I really liked how creative we got to be and how we got to mess around and be funny. I want to see more funny activities where people in the class can add in their own funny remarks and be silly. My most memorable experience was When we did the intros with the hand gestures or when we did the party role play.
*This workshop was sponsored and supported by Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Duke Service-learning and David L. Paletz Innovative Teaching.
Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
