New taste of theatre in DU

From Kirori Mal to Lady Shri Ram and St Stephen’s to Ramjas, colleges in DU have all been gripped by theatre fever. Soaring high on enthusiasm, with the urge to create something new and attractive yet experimental and classic - all at the same time, students are geared up for their acts on stage. Metrolife checks out the latest trend of plays in the university.

The recently concluded Ibsen Festival and Old World Collegiate Theatre festival, theatre societies of DU staged last year’s productions. Now, the new productions are planning to add more to college theatre with altered themes, tailored techniques and professionalised stage craft.

At the intra-college level, St Stephen’s Shakespeare Society recently had its fest and is now organising the competition at inter-college level. Some of the plays staged at the intra-college level were Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Play Without Accents, English Made Simple and The Comedian.

Most were adaptations of classics like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf which was reduced to 40 minutes from the original 3 hour 40 minute production. Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal, a member of Shakesoc says, “Experimentation is on full swing as the story lines are made more crisp and clean. Shakesoc has been essentially known for its English plays but now we are adapting to the Indian context and in Hindi as well.” So the language is changing and so are the presentations.

From lighting to sound, everything is turning more professional. Even the proportion of original scripts is becoming a trend. Shubham Bhatia, president of Shunya (theatre society of Ramjas) shares that his team is constantly performing in festivals till December.

“What I notice this year is that everybody is moving towards intelligent theatre. Earlier, I never saw anyone thinking so deeply about the scripts or promoting original ideas. The trend of discussions is also being encouraged a lot. We have decided that we will discuss the play between stagings rather than perform blindly. The idea is not to repeat mistakes.”

While improvement is the agenda, themes and forms of presentation have also been entertained by festival directors. Atelier’s Campus Theatre Festival (ACT) 2012, which started in 2004 as a four day festival has increased to 16 days this year.

Kuljeet Singh, creative director, Atelier Theatre says, “We couldn’t accommodate few interesting plays last year so we increased the number of days of the festival but now we feel that there is more to be accommodated and thus the days will have tobe increased every year.” ACT has invited regional theatre this year from Kolkata, Gujarat and Rajasthan along with alternative techniques such as Dastangoi and red nose clowning.