The Story Studio: Masterclasses in Writing and Storytelling for Children

14 – 15 February 2018

The session on storytelling by Ameen Haque started with him recalling his childhood habit of stammering and stuttering, as a result of which his mother enrolled him to participate in certain activities which included speech therapy, elocution and theatre. It gave him the confidence to write and direct his own play in class 10^th. Though the play was not a success, his teachers were supportive of him furthering his approach in the field. Haque commented, “When you fail at life, the best gift you can get is encouragement.”

Having being born into a lower middle class family, Ameen Haque studied sales and advertisement, and was placed in one of the finest companies of Mumbai. After acquiring a paying job, Haque returned to his hobby by joining the theatre at night. He argued that stories have a lot of power, they can create and destroy. To validate his point, Haque played a game with the audience called “Fastest Fingers”. The point of the activity was to prove that while a person may forget the facts and lessons he had been forced to learn, he always remembers the stories that were told to him in his childhood. He said, “Stories were the only means to pass wisdom back in the days. We would sit in a cave around fire and tell stories that affected survival.”