LE PROJECT EXILES – A Short Report
Introduction-The word 'Exile' goes beyond the realm of being just another word from the English language. A sentiment, a thought, a feeling so deep that perhaps even when the dictionary describes it as ‘the state of being barred from one's native country, typically for political or punitive reasons’, it is unable to bring forth what a lost home or a lost childhood or what a family forced apart could mean to people who have experienced it.
The Exiles Project
In an attempt towards understanding this sentiment, students from the Shiv Nadar School, Noida has been engaged with ‘The Exiles Project’ for over a year. The Project that started in April 2017 is a global attempt to understand and introspect the horrors of the World War I and how we are still trying to cope with lessons that the human race refuses to learn. 2018 marks the hundredth years of this war and this project articulates the effects of war that creates ‘exile’.
The project combined history and contemporary realities through the lens of puppetry, film and object theatre. This was done in collaboration with the French puppetry group Le Tas de Sable Ches Panses Vertes and the Indian puppet theatre group, ‘Katkatha’, reviewing the First World War on its centenary, focusing particularly on the exiles and migrations caused by war. In its first edition, in 2013-14, children from across the world came together in France to look at the causes of the war, and the ways towards peace.
In its second edition, the project focused on the end of the war, its outcomes and the millions of humans it pushed into permanent exile. Students from the Shiv Nadar School, Noida looked at the subject not only through personal stories and conversations with those who have experienced it, but also researched the travails that war can create for those who create war-like situations, as well as those who get caught into it unwillingly.
Representing not only their country and school, but Asia too, the eight students travelled to Amiens, France from the 15th to the 19th of May, 2018, where they presented ‘Faslein’ or distance using the mediums of shadow puppetry and theatre. For this tremendous effort, the team received a standing ovation. Several students from France, South Africa and Morocco who were also part of the project participated in the culmination at the Le Safran Theatre Hall at Amiens too. Some students from Brazil and Argentina who were unable to attend in person shared their experiences of the engagement through films etc that was shared with the audience present.
The sensitive portrayal of ‘exiles’ by the students was highly evocative and won the hearts of those present, resulting in connects with people from across the world. It remained an absolutely befitting culmination to a long engagement with war, peace, people, displacement, families and friends. Many transcended the confines that borders can create only to remind themselves and those around that colour, race and nationalities do not always divide, but if diversity can be celebrated with the creation of ‘Vasudev Kutumbakam’ – The world is one family, a tradition that our country has long been part of, can very much be a possibility.
To these torchbearers from the Shiv Nadar School, Noida, the harbingers of a better world today and tomorrow, the work has only just begun!
