In the last week of November, the Tiatr Academy of Goa will be organizing the VI Children's Tiatr Festival and competition at the Gomant Vidya Niketan Hall in Margao and thirteen troupes in all have confirmed their participation.
The Tiatr Academy of Goa puts in a lot of effort in organizing this Children's Tiatr Festival. Sadly, however, their efforts sometimes fall short for want of the right direction and approach. Being a Children's Tiatr Festival in which children below the age of 18 years can participate, the script of the tiatr presented should essentially be centered around the lives of children who are below eighteen years of age. Hence, tiatrs of M Boyer, Pai Tiatrist Joao Agostinho Fernandes, Souza Ferrao or Kid Boxer or any other senior tiatrist cannot be presented as their scripts are not children oriented.
In the past, during the meetings held with the participating troupe leaders, this aspect or rather this
salient feature was discussed threadbare but the organisers failed to take corrective action in this
regard. The problem catapulted to greater heights as one such tiatr that had no relevance and
resemblance to the lives of children was declared the winner. This was a clear injustice to the other participating troupes as a tiatr that did not qualify to participate in the competition was declared a winner by the judges.
The Tiatr Academy of Goa definitely had and has all the good intentions to promote tiatr. Probably the Academy did not want to discourage the children from the participating troupe by disallowing a script that had no relevance to the lives of the children and hence allowed the troupe to participate. Instead, the Tiatr Academy should have given the particular troupe leader a week's time to change the script and make it children oriented. Had this being done, injustice to the other participating troupes would have been avoided.
The Tiatr Academy of Goa should set up a panel of literature experts to go through the scripts of the
tiatr submitted and verify the contents to check suitability and take remedial action before the
draw of tiatr competition is drawn. Those scripts that do not toe the line of competition should be
disqualified from presentation.
Since this is a competition, level playing field should be given to all participants. All participants
should be made submissive to the rules and spirit of the competition. If rules are bent to suit the
interests of some participants, the competition shall have no value and the children's tiatr will be the
ultimate looser.
Finally a competition is successful only if quality judges are appointed. Since this is a tiatr
competition, a minimum of two tiatrists, with sound knowledge of tiatr should be on the panel of
judges. The third judge should be a musician with knowledge of musical notations. Competitions take tiatr to a higher level and if judges do not have the caliber to understand innovations and
experimentations, tiatr will be the ultimate loser.
