Vir Gupta, a class 11 student is helping the aged realize their acting dream, by directing plays for them.
Vir’s passion for theatre began in class 1 when he started performing. So when Dipti Varma of The Silver Surfers Club- a social impact organisation, asked him to help with the club’s annual play ‘Older and Bolder’, he was more than delighted.
Initially, he was supposed to assist, but later he went on to direct the play.The Silver Surfers Club aims at building a strong community of seniors who together disrupt the perception of ageing while inspiring others along the way.
The play featured 15 old-age actors and one teenager and is filled with laugh-out-loud moments on life and living through a sparkling Silver lens.
The idea behind it, is to bring together the older and younger generation work together to make people understand their lives in a humorous way.
Talking about his experience of working with the old, Vir told The Logical Indian, “First thing you have to understand is that they had zero exposure of theatre. None of them have performed earlier. So I had to start from basics like surrounding presence, voice clarity and fluctuation, etc. But the interesting fact was they themselves came up with the ideas.”
But teaching them the basics was just a start, Vir had to understand their nature, physical abilities and even their commutation problems.
“I distributed the roles based on their personalities. Some of them were shy, some were excited, but the main challenge was to develop the character and to make the audience understand why it is in the script.” But it didn’t stop at that, Vir had to visit the residences of each of them for rehearsals.
Speaking of the aged actor, Vir says that they call themselves as the “sandwich generation”, since they have seen both gramophones to iPods.
