Music, Drama, and Art on display at the Arts Festival

Woodstock School celebrated the creative arts over the four-day Arts Festival from Wednesday May 12th to Saturday, May 15th. The festival, featuring western and Indian classical music, drama, and art, concluded with the school's annual sale, the 'Mela' on Saturday.

The highlight of the programmes was a talk on the conservation of art and the case study on the restoration of a Frank Wesley painting, given by the Art Conservation Centre from the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) in New Delhi. One of the most distinguished Indian Christian artists of the 20th century, Frank Wesley (1923-2002) shares a special relationship with Woodstock School and Mussoorie. He was the head of the school's art department from 1969-73.

Lost for more than twenty years, Wesley's painting, 'Jesus Healing the Sick' was rediscovered in the attic of the Landour Community Hospital (LCH) in October, 2008. This important work of art was commissioned for the hospital in the early 1970s, during Wesley's four-year tenure at Woodstock. The rediscovered painting suffered severe damage during storage and was handed over by LCH to Woodstock School last year. In February 2009, the painting was sent to INTACH for restoration. The restoration process took around four months, and the painting was returned to Woodstock to be displayed at the school's library.

On Thursday, May 13th, Joyotika Roy and Sarojkant Mishra, two conservators from INTACH, spoke to art students at Woodstock, giving an introduction on the art conservation and speaking in depth about their process of restoring the Wesley painting. They spoke about the scale of the work, challenges in restoring by staying ethically devoted to the artist's vision, examination under special lights, adding auxiliary support to the painting, and chemical cleaning.

On Wednesday, over 50 student musicians in Woodstock performed a recital of western classical music.

Wednesday night featured two One-Act plays at Woodstock's Parker Hall, presented by the Drama classes from Woodstock and Wynberg-Allen Schools respectively. The first play, by Woodstock, was 'Sorry Wrong Number' by Lucille Fletcher, a thriller story of the paranoid Mrs. Stevenson, who accidentally overhears a murder plot when she is connected to the wrong number. The second play was 'Bury the Dead', written by Irvin Shaw, and performed by students from Wynberg-Allen school. The play is an expressionist horror-drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. The two plays were repeated on Saturday evening.

Canadian ceramics expert Ms. Nova Cassan is also visiting Woodstock during this period - Cassan held a Clay Workshop for Woodstock staff at the school's Clay Centre on Thursday night. For the course of the Arts Festival, art work from Woodstock students (KG to Grade 12) was put on display at Media Centre.

On Friday, May 14th, Indian music maestros Aloke Maiti (Indian Music teacher at Woodstock) and Gurmeet Singh held workshops during classes for music students. Friday evening featured a special Indian music recital, with Maiti on the sitar and Singh playing the tabla