Fierce battle on the stage

For Yemenis able to spend, the joy of a crispy sambusa, spongy rawani or syrupy baklava is at the heart of the Ramadan experience.

It was a fun-filled week for the students of NMKRV College for Women, who organised ‘Page to Stage’, a week-long drama competition. With 30 teams participating this year, the inter-class competition was stiff. While some teams wrote their own script, others chose to recreate well-known plays. Some students hired directors and costumes for the performance while others opted to make their own costumes and direct their own plays.

As part of the event, the students also had a poster-making competition to advertise their plays. Aaqilah S, a final-year BA student whose team performed a play based on a Japanese film, Rashomon, said, “We worked very hard through the month to put up the show. Coming early to college, staying back after classes, practising on Sundays — we put in a lot of effort. What we wanted to ensure was quality.”

Aaqilah, who participated for the second year in a row, added, “While all of us are interested in theatre, none of us have much theatre exposure otherwise. This was a great learning experience.” Sana Merchant, a final-year BBM student whose team performed Shakesp­ea­re’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, said, “Finalising on the play we wanted to perform was a task. Since there were many teams who were performing plays in Kannada, we wanted to do something different.”  

She added, “We had to make some changes to the original script owing to the time constraint.” The teams, which were a combination of juniors and seniors, got a chance to interact and learn from one another. “We work­ed very well as a team and we learnt a lot,” added Sana. First-time participant, Sanjana Vidya­sagar, a first-year B.Sc student said, “What made it a wonderful experience was the fact that the judges gave us feedback. They noticed every detail and told us how it could have been done differently.” Che­ering the 350 students who took part, Pooja, a stud­ent, said, “Each and every play was unique in its own way. There was a good mix of histo­rical, humourous and social plays.” 

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