BHUBANESWAR: Inaugurated on 6th December, BhuFeSto – International Storytelling Festival, part of .FEST (Bhubaneswar City Festival), curated by Bakul Foundation, continues to be known for its unique experiences. With the objective of promoting inclusivity and diversity, the festival curated special storytelling sessions for children with visual and hearing disabilities.
The first session at Indira Gandhi Park Saturday was designed for the visually challenged with a focus of the performance on the use of sounds, music, onomatopoeia and sound-scaping. For this session, Deepa Kiran performed a musical storytelling of a popular story – Ramayana but with a twist. The children enjoyed the interesting plot with various musical instruments that aptly enriched the musical telling.
It was an interesting experience for the children from other schools as they realized how stories could be enjoyed from the sound of the storytelling.
The inclusive nature of BhuFeSto was underscored from the very first session of the festival where it held a session for specially-abled children with hearing disabilities. Conceptualized and performed as a tandem performance by Nita Gopalakrishnan, Technical Director, Deaf Child World Wide and Deepa Kiran, a storyteller and International storyteller-educationalist from India, the storytelling was both verbal (in Hindi) by Deepa and in Indian Sign Language by Nita.
Storytelling of the popular ‘Monkey and the Cap Seller’ was a visually rich narrative, keeping in mind an interactive performance for deaf children. A rendition was retold with a twist at the end of the session. As the performance progressed and the interaction kept the children and adults engrossed, the deaf children applauded with the deaf clap of raising their hands and shaking their palms. Consequently, the others in the audience also began to do the deaf clap.
