The Bhutanese Leading the way.
A
cting is an art and in that it’s a most compelling skill which churns the emotions of viewers to draw tears, laughter and angered temperaments. With a growing local industry to showcase such talents many youths and seniors alike in the country are interested to make a career out of acting.
A lack of avenues that nurture or train the interested was a problem. Fortunately for the first time, training on basic acting is being organized by Department of Youth and Sports (DYS) for out of school youth specifically class X and XII graduates.
DYS’s Chief Program Officer (CPO) Rinzin Wangmo said, initially during registration time the number was little more but later some had to withdraw due to some reasons and only 10 people turned up for the course.
About 20 slots were announced for the training.
The CPO said, “Despite free courses being offered by the government, youths do not turn up. We can see many out of school youths loitering in the streets”.
She explained the course has been reserved particularly for the out of school youth and especially those who have completed class X and XII because “most of these out of school youths are class X and XII dropouts”.
She said they are not able to continue their studies in private schools or colleges due to financial problems and the academic marks they have are not good enough to get absorbed in the job market.
“This is also to give skills for those who are interested in acting since we don’t have such platform for the youth to learn,” she added.
Moreover she said, “this also adds value to help build character, personality as well as to gain confidence which will be helpful during interviews in future and also gain communication skills which is very important in one’s life”.
The interested youth are attending acting classes conducted by a foreign teacher from Denmark, Katrine Elise Leth Nielsen who is also an actress in Copenhagen Theater in Denmark.
Katrine said she wanted to give the students the basic knowledge which would benefit them in future as well.
“Moreover, they can be independent and can also be actors/actresses in future,” she added.
She said actors and actresses play an important role because if they are really true to their acting, through their acting and expressions they will be able to convey morals and societal messages to create awareness.
A couple of students who are part of a Bhutanese series are also learning from the Danish teacher. The students shared the training they received in the past from trainers in Noida, India were little different and the current training has got something new to learn for them.
‘Improvisation’ was something new for the students. In this technique they have to perform suddenly and make a story out of the act without any preparation.
In simple terms, it can also be understood as an “on the spot” act. Here one member starts the act and is later joined by another taking the story to the different level.
The spontaneity of the technique leads the story through exciting, sad, angry, happy twists of emotions altering a simple beginning of one dialogue to many ends and new beginnings.
Majority of students said, given a chance, they would definitely act in Bhutanese movie.s. The two weeks training started on 13 November.
