"Farah Bala’s icy lava flow of schemes and flashes of impatience” as a modern day Lady Macbeth transported into an insane asylum had critic Joe Del Priore’s acclaim. He described her characterization as "cold and measured, a quiet tyrant” in The Willful Company presentation at the Actors’ Theater Workshop in New York, August 13-29, 2004. The real life Bala is an entirely different personality as she brings theater art as a stage director into the lives of underprivileged middle school black children in New York, vide her curriculum vitae (CV) forwarded to Parsiana by Jamshed Kotwal.
A Master of Fine Arts in Theater from New York State’s Sarah Lawrence College, Farah was the only foreign student accepted that year, says her mother Dr Gulrukh Bala. Currently working as organizer, academic and theater instructor at the Sports and Arts in Schools Foundation’s Wildcat High School since September 2003, Bala has developed a year-long curriculum for the Study Skills class and Theater Workshop, notes her curriculum vitae. In the process she has counseled and encouraged students towards leading a more fulfilling life, broadened their field of knowledge, helped them to build skills and motivate them to complete high school. As she told Sarayu Sriram in an interview published in The Urban Indian weekly (December 17, 2004), "The children were reluctant to participate initially. Gradually, as we progressed along the semester, when the kids were exposed to the arts, they realized that they could discover the artist within themselves through self-expression. That gave them something to look forward to.”
Bala: developing the art of self-expression
How does the diminutive 23-year-old control her students who probably tower over her? wondered Sriram. "By becoming one of the gang. I am the disciplinarian only when called for; other times I clown around with the students just to show I am no different from them,” says Bala. Gulrukh confided to Parsiana that Farah found the deprived children, tottering on the brink of juvenile delinquency, so hungry and tired by the last class at the end of the day, she would share some snacks with them to provide the incentive to stay and to whet their attention.
The Arts and Entertainment column of Bronx News (June 17-23, 2004) describes the "magical end of the school year evening of theater” as Bala’s students presented The Sound of the Estate — a contemporary adaptation of an Anton Chekov play, transported from 19th century Russia to a once famous and successful recording studio that had fallen on difficult times. "The play closed with the actors rhyming and free styling, which got the audience up on its feet,” states the report. "We gave these talented and bright students an opportunity to work in a professional theater setting and to experience the joys and wonder of a live performance. And what great performers they were,” Bala told the Bronx News reporter. Jim O’Neil, executive director of the Sports and Arts in Schools Foundation praised Bala: "Farah brings her talent not only as an actress and as a theatrical professional to her work but in addition, the students also benefit from her experience in producing a theater festival for young people in her native Bombay.”
In the summer of 2004 Bala developed a six-week visual arts curriculum encouraging self-expression through keeping a journal, creating a ‘hope quilt’ and making murals as teaching artist from the Creative Arts Team at Public School 60. These middle school kids learnt to create props and costume pieces required for the drama class which were used in the final performance, states the CV.
For Lunchbox II, a theater outreach program, Bala developed an eight-month curriculum, October 2002-May 2003, leading students into a final performance which extended their physical and vocal awareness and encouraged them to express themselves through writing and performing their own work. May 2002 and July 2003 were spent developing a seven-day, 35-hour intensive workshop curriculum which informed students about the concepts of character, structure and environment and guided high school students through the process of writing, improvising and performing their own plays. October 2001-May 2002 she developed a special program for middle school students with extreme disciplinary problems to enhance focus, widen the imagination, improve acting skills. The students were encouraged to collaborate on a final production performed at the Sarah Lawrence College where Bala was in the first year of her masters course, simultaneously performing diverse administrative duties in the Graduate Students Office and the Performing Arts Center and as fitness assistant at the Campbell Sports Center supervising the weight room, ensuring safety and suggesting workout regimes. Along the way she had performed in a number of stage and TV productions, keeping her eyes open for the much awaited break on Broadway.
This alumnus of Bombay’s Queen Mary’s School and St Xavier’s College had honed many of her talents working for theater personality Rael Padamsee’s group, giving tuitions to private students in English, history and geography and as founding member of Q Theatre Productions involved with production, public relations, publicity and marketing. Fluent in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati, with various English accents on call, Bala had completed eighth grade in speech and drama and first grade in piano from Trinity College, London. She was also personal assistant to the late Persis Kham-batta, researching the history of past beauty queens, transcribing and helping to edit Pride of India: Miss India.
Reading, opera, movies and knitting are some of the activities that keep Farah occupied, says Gulrukh, a holistic healer, who has worked very hard to give her two children the opportunity to shine; and they have, thanks to their own initiative and industry. Naushir, Farah’s elder brother, an aeronautics engineer who now designs aircraft engines for Pratt and Whitney in Hartsford, Connecticut, also held four campus jobs while acquiring his BS and MS degrees, notes Gulrukh with justifiable pride, adding that the US government has extended an O1 visa to Farah, meant only for aliens with extraordinary ability.