Harvest and the Rest
Thu, 15 Aug
|Kufri
An Autumnal Storytelling Workshop with Aanand Chabukswar
Time & Location
15 Aug 2024, 4:00 pm – 19 Aug 2024, 11:00 am
Kufri, Gallu, near Fortune ITC Resort, Kufri, Himachal Pradesh 171012, India
Guests
About The Event
The orchards at the Camp Nomad will be ready for apple-picking this autumn, and we invite you at this time to pause, relax with a cuppa, recall, and share stories.
Stories are at the core of our expression, communication, and the idea of who we are. Across generations, folktales, narratives, and memories dwell with us and inform the way we shape meanings and interactions. We’ll delve into that. We’ll recall, recognise, reorganise and retell. We shall regale ourselves with dainty, funny, scandalous, moving and mesmerising narratives and rejuvenate with tales that offer healing and insight. This is an opportunity to reconnect with our innate storytelling skills and experience the intimate circle of listeners and tellers.
As a finale, we’ll create an evening of storytelling performances on the last day of the workshop.
Focus of the storytelling workshop:
- Reconnect with our innate skills of storytelling and listening
- Reflect on folk and traditional narratives for their layers of meaning and messaging; rejuvenate with tales that offer healing and insight
- Recreate and retell narratives that we choose to share with others; reshape memories into stories and make some story-memories
- Relax with the vast view of mountains, valleys and the silence of the chirping orchards.
Workshop highlights:
- Working with breath, theatrical voice and speech, and silence
- A storytelling and listening community
- Creative exploration of memories and meanings
- Discovering connections with stories that enrich, expand and reflect our contemporary life and concerns
- Sharing tales that give space to our unique voice and metaphors
- Camp-fire, and the rest: Camp-fire, chit-chat and fun, melody, inspiration
- Storytelling evening: sharing stories in an evening performance circle
- Nature Meditation Walks
- Himachali folk music and food
- Orchard and forest sessions
- Finale performance on the last day
ACCOMMODATION
Participants will stay in Swiss-style luxury tents, with British campaign style furniture. All tents have ensuite washrooms that have geysers, hot showers, and private sitouts. For college students, or participants needing fee reductions, we will also have the option of staying in pub tents without ensuite washrooms. Please get in touch if you would like to know more.
COST
The 5 day workshops costs Rs. 34,000 per person on twin sharing or Rs 46,000 per person on single occupancy (based on availability). Reduced rates are possible for those who are happy to stay in our smaller pub tents without ensuite washrooms.
Total cost includes:
- 6 workshop sessions spread out over 4 nights, 5 days
- Accommodation for 4 nights, 5 days.
- Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 rounds of chai and snacks from 4 PM on Day 1 to 1 PM on Day 5
- Forest field trip with picnic
- Optional Guided Mountain Walks each morning
- Special local Himachali dinner one night
- Live Music and Bonfire on one night
- Basic first aid and stationery
- As many apples as you cat eat from our trees!
Total cost excludes:
- Travel from participants’ respective cities
- Additional food, alcohol etc.
- Medical expenses beyond first aid, if needed
- Insurance
- Other Personal Expenses
SCHEDULE:
The first day will we centred around arrival, settling-in, introductions and context setting
Living and creative fulfilment meet seamlessly in the traditional and ancient art form of storytelling! Stories are everywhere, and everything is a story! We shall begin to explore the art of storytelling as a creative venture, yes, but also look at its potential as something that informs a conscious shaping of our daily narratives and lived experiences.
From day two on we shall weave the skills of speech and voice, silence, and laughter
Skills are abundant and inherent, a choice to use them where they matter is a door waiting to be opened! Theatrical skills are life skills, and when life demands, they play out. We will focus on reconnecting and re-articulating these skills and choose to express in a way that is aligned with the listener and thus deeply effective while immersing in the joy of stories and sharing them. Folktales and many stories are infused with comic elements. These tales will appear in the workshop to claim their place as harbingers of lightness in our being with their abundance of comic fun.
With day three we will enter the territory of memories as stories and meaning-making that gives power in our context
Memories and mind’s recall are full of stories. Some memories may feel stuck and some may yield a source of power beyond imagination. Remembering them, letting them go, or firmly planting them as favourites is a gentle and deeply personal process. This requires an environment of retreat and playfulness of a creative community. How we receive and process a tale will makes for insights. We shall create ample opportunities for reflections and interpretations such that the stories offer perspectives and touch a chord of playful yet deep understanding.
Day four is about space for reflection, choices, storytelling practice and performance
Picking on the elements of design, we’ll explore tales that resonate with us, and prepare them for sharing. Getting to see their layered use in the personal and professional work that we do. We’ll practice some and share in an evening of storytelling performance in our community of tellers and listeners.
Last day, for good-byes, hugs and journey back
Before parting we shall have shared ample stories — not just the facilitator, but each one, our memories, our childhood store, our experiences, the beautiful environment – all these would have contributed to the storytelling and the practice of listening. We would go back with a perspective on stories and storytelling that enhances, informs and enlivens our work, life, and relationships.
About the facilitator:
Aanand Chabukswar is one of the pioneers of Applied Theatre practice and Arts-Based Therapy (ABT) model in India. He has been working in the field of service through the arts for communities, NGOs, special needs persons, in universities, school education and adult training for more than 30 years.
Over years of work in theatre, education and therapy, Aanand has made a deep connection with the structures and flow of stories and folk narratives. He has listened and told stories with groups of tribal children, in the slums and orphanages, on the slopes of Transylvanian mountains in Romania as leader of International dramatherapy trainings, with Roma youth, in schools - in Pune, on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, in primary school in Somerset (UK), school for the visually impaired in Lisbon (Portugal), and so on. He has engaged with the narrative power of storytelling and theatre in Latvia, in several NGO’s across India, with young students and Practitioners in Universities and colleges and with professors from all over the country as a training faculty under the aegis of University Grants Commission (UGC).
An internationally published author in the field of dramatherapy, Aanand has also published works for children. His latest offering is the book titled Creative Rites of the Recovering Mind based on his decade-long engagement with those living with mental illness. He is also the founder of the Applied Theatre School (appliedtheatreschool.in).
Aanand has a vast experience of facilitating different groups through the lively media of theatre/drama, play, poetry and stories, across regions of India and different countries and cultures. He has designed this special engagement with storytelling for Camp Nomad to mark an exploration of the power and joy of storytelling and listening in the lap of nature and silence.