mumbai the annual play is usually the extent of theatre in most schools in the city often its an event that parents impatiently endure and kids enjoy but years later recall with painful embarrassment but schools in mumbai are gradually taking theatre and other arts such as cinema and visual arts more seriously whereas once these activities were pursued after school hours they are now being incorporated into daily timetables and professionals are being hired to teach them theatre professionals a company of theatre practitioners has been teaching drama in schools since 2008 cofounder jehan manekshaw says that their agenda involves using drama as a vehicle for studying subjects in the syllabus for example if students are studying tribal cultures then we plan theatre exercises which explore that he says the aim is confidencebuilding and socialisation skills the push is on drama as process rather than end product the south indian education society sies commissioned theatre professionals two years ago at a reunion in 2007 a group of exstudents from the 1969 batch decided to pay tribute to their school by providing class nine theatre training radha ramaswamy an exstudent based in bangalore who does drama workshops that follow theatre of the oppressed techniques says that when she was a teacher at mount carmel she saw how theatre could make learning come alive the classes have been so popular that even students of class ten who usually avoid all extracurricular activities to focus on the final exam demanded them the arts should be integrated in everything we do in school she says they should not be seen as standalone subjects they should inform an approach to education a large proportion of siess students come from dharavi these are children who have never been exposed to anything like this says ravi ramakantan ramaswamys batchmate and a doctor in mumbai the headmistress tells me that on drama class day the children never bunk most schools that have the arts in their curricula follow the international baccalaureate and igcse boards some cbse schools too have incorporated the arts into their curricula after the national council of educational research and training ncert introduced a syllabus that included theatre music dance and the visual arts in 2008 sananda mukhopadhyaya is a member of theatre professionals and teaches independently at b d somani international school which offers the ib programme theatre is one of the items students can choose for their sixth subject its a learning process for me as well she says i can decide that im going to look at nautanki and then an ibsen play and then butoh from japan the students go through process of learning history and becoming culturally sensitive they learn what the relevance of art is priya srinivasan runs the pomegranate workshop a company that teaches film appreciation and public speaking in schools and runs independent workshops on drama filmmaking and storytelling schools are definitely becoming more open to the arts she says they feel that