A GREAT COINCIDENCE

On 29th October 1999, there wa

s a Super Cyclone happened in Orissa. Around 10 thousand people died in one evening. The sea water entered with a height of 15 meters and the wind speed was about 250 kilometers per hour. After this disaster Natya Chetana visited the affected places. Just before two weeks Natya Chetana had produced a play named “Sapana ra Sapana” to support an Environmental drive to revive Mangroves Forest at the same coastline. In the last scene of the play there was a scene of a cyclone to highlight the importance of the mangroves forest. It was a great coincidence !

So as a commitment to the people, Natya Chetana theatre group visited those villages after the Super cyclone.

IMMEDIATE RESPONSES :

A. Firstly Natya Chetana documented the situation.

B. Secondly NC felt the need of sharing the sad stories from the sufferers who were not having anyone to listen them. The sympathetic outsiders were throwing the relief and going back. So it put up a series of Creative Camp in this region (Erasama, which was the worst affected patch).

In this Creative Camp Natya Chetana :

• Began with listening to the people and record those as cases.
• Started doing video news-magazine to create confidence by giving news of the people who are trying to revive, information about the assistances available, highlighting the courageous work of the children and women etc. and carried the video news-magazine with a set of generator, television and video player to show that to the people.
• Released a poster every day printed by Natya Chetana screen printing unit to create a thinking process on self building.
• Did puppetry action to make them laugh and think about the reconstruction.
• Did Action-song demonstration shows to keep up the spirit of unity.
• Motivated children to gather in one place to play theatre games, which lead a process to revive schools.
• Conducted theatre games with women victims to make them happy and talk about their problems among themselves .
• Supplied musical instruments to folk theatre groups to revive their traditional performances.
• Encouraged to do rehearsal and shows by the folk theatre groups.
• Invited them to a special State level Theatre Festival organised in Bhubaneswar, the state capital .
• Created a drama named “Geeta”, on the case of an old woman victim, and the theatre production was being taken other parts of Orissa to facilitate support for the victims