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Lit Bug Fest : All geared up for day-long celebration of literature, art and theatre in Pune
In the previous year, the team introduced ‘pyjama story time’, where children come to listen to stories wearing pyjamas.
In its fourth year, Lit Bug Fest promises a day long celebration of literature, art, theatre and everything creative, today.
Started in 2016, Lit Bug Fest is the brainchild of Vaishali Kulkarni, founder, The Story Station and Ishan Kshrisagar, co-founder Lit Bug Fest.
Kulkarni, who has been a story teller for the last 13 years, founded The Story Station in 2015. All the activities worked upon through the year are culminated for everyone to participate and engage at the Lit Bug Fest.
Kulkarni said, “In the first year of The Story Station we had a writing project for children and went ahead and published a book on the same at the first Lit Bug Fest. We wanted everyone else to enjoy the literature that we were putting forth. While doing so we also associated with Aditi Deodhar of Jeevitnadi.”
Over time, they held storytelling sessions at river banks, thus focusing on topics of environment, rivers and waste. “During the sessions, we had children write street plays and one was even performed at the second festival.
Our story telling project at river banks still continues,”added Kulkarni.
In the previous year, the team introduced ‘pyjama story time’, where children come to listen to stories wearing pyjamas.
This is when they realised that children were reluctant and sceptical of picking books of a different language. “For example, an English medium school student would not be comfortable reading a Marathi book.
“ We wanted to get rid of this linguistic barriers that children build up in their heads, and we deliberately worked towards presenting good literature from different languages.”
Hence, the theme for the fourth year is languages:The dwindling effect of mother languages and folk/rural languages.
“We have organised activities and sessions in about 8 to 10 languages, Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, German, French and even sign language.I feel silence is also a potent language and hence we have one story being enacted by Anita Iyer in sign language.”
The fourth edition of Lit Bug Fest is being held today at Yashada, Baner, 10am-7pm.
Highlights of the day:
10 AM: Chambar Chaukashi che natak: A children’s Marathi play by students of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan School
11:30 AM: Summet Sharma: Ex-army and war hero will talk on language of patriotism
2 PM: Biha: Physical theatre by Pushkar Rangmanch
3 PM: Amit Patwardhan: learning Brahmi, the mother of Indian scripts
5:30 PM: Multilingual stories
