A good story has an excellent appeal, and a social message communicated trough a good story has a universal, impact, especially on children.
This was the idea behind inviting the “Power of Play” (PoP) performers led by Ms Sulochana Dissanayake to Trinity College to deliver a performance using puppets of various styles to share a message on gender biases existing in our society.
A powerful message communicated through a little girl called “Sama” and her study mate “Sandun”, discusses the gravity and the long-term detrimental social impact of simple biases inculcated in children during their childhood, such as “boys shouldn’t cry like girls” and “girls shouldn’t climb trees like boys do”, etc. and how to breakthrough these barriers and build harmonious interpersonal, gender relationships by building self-confidence, trust and mutual respect for both the genders.
Delivered through an interactive theatre style, the PoP performers continuously interacted with the student audience making them share their ideas on these social biases, their points of view, and eventually leading them to understand the worthlessness of these prejudices that persist in society through age old beliefs, practices and conventional thinking.
The PoP initiative was a great method of delighting the audience of all ages and inspires students to learn and communicate frankly by breaking through barriers of age, gender, socio-economic, political and cultural backgrounds.
More than 1,7 00 students their tutorial staff attended the PoP Performances that were conducted in two sessions.
Full gallery is available on our Flickr page:
