My name is Nadya Yurukova. I come from Bulgarian. I work in Bulgaria. I work for an organization that does teaches training, and incidentally, my specialty is introducing drama theater games and techniques into the classroom, in the context of a classroom for learning purposes, but not only just for the well- being of teachers as well, actually, as well as students. So, I’m very passionate about it. I believe deeply in the benefits of that kind of approach, but I also understand it difficult to change people’s habits and approaches and beliefs. If they hadn’t tried before. So, it’s an ongoing process.
We’ve been here at the Epidaurus in Greece for several days in a lovely, lovely camp next to the sea, bonding and getting to know each other, people from different countries, different lands of Europe. It was a wonderful experience, and the organizers gave us provided us with the privilege to actually attend high end theater performance in the epidural theater itself, which is one of the best preserved ancient Greek theaters with this exceptional unique engineering achievement. That holds to this day, there was probably 10,000 people watching the other night. It’s something that doesn’t happen every day for sure. And I and the other people probably are very grateful for it.
But it’s not just a treat, for us. It was part of our program here, getting deep into the into the value of theater, and into analyzing theater performance. Especially with such a really huge and deep ancient text, like Antigone. So, we were engaged with different kind of experts from the world, including a theater director and improv trainer to really deeply analyze, think about it Express our thoughts on it, which I think it’s a great thing to afford yourself to do. It’s enriching in so many ways. Not least, just getting comfortable with expressing your thoughts and feelings regarding an artwork of such magnitude with other people and conducting very deep and interesting conversations about our conversations that go beyond everyday topics and, I don’t know, maybe everyday work or home problems. That is really refreshing and really healing, I think, for a human being, a human being, whether it’s a teacher, student, or something else needs a little bit of food for the soul, and I think theater is one of the most. What the word. The easiest to reach most affordable ways to allow yourself to think about higher concepts and analyze, even if you just criticize.
By the way, it was very, very interesting set up, the whole performance. I don’t want to get into details about how the stage was rotating, but it did give us a whole day of a material for a whole day of analysis, and frankly, we can do it for a whole week. It’s so rich in the text and the interpretation. So as far as I know, this hasn’t been done before in this format. And I haven’t been part of anything like this either before, so I find it really, really interesting. I and stimulating and challenging in the best possible way. And a great introduction to improv theater games. For groups of people, let’s say, of course it involves its applicable in a classroom. I think actually that’s where it starts.
From early age, I deeply believe in power of not only theater, but play, because in pro theater games allow you to just set the right spirit in the learning environment, that’s very much supports focus, play, bonding with people in very positive way. Laughter, joy. And learning shouldn’t be something learning shouldn’t be suffering. I think learning is joy. Whoever said that knowledge brings you, whatever, it was sadness, melancholy. It may be half right. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen, but I didn’t learn also knowledge and learning brings joy. At least makes you happier with your own company, if nothing else.
But above all, in our case, it’s for the benefits of the features as well as the students. Because we need happy, joyful, relaxed and teachers that are well taken care of. In our day and age, education, it’s literally a matter of security. European or whatever. I truly believe that education is our biggest weapon. And it’s also a weapon that doesn’t take life. It gives life. It gives more quality to life. And if I have to work on something to the rest of my life, with or without results, I think this is worth doing.
