Tapping talents on stage

A team from Ranga Shankara has selected nine colleges, out of the 20 City colleges, to compete with each other from October 29 to November 3.
This competition’s format is a little different and new compared to the usual competitions.

     Keerthi Bhanu, Co-ordinator, Ranga Shankara College Competition 2009, says, “Each college gets to perform in their own college and will have an opportunity to visit another college and perform in front of them as well. This concept of home and away is being tried for the first time and looks like everyone is eager to visit another college.”

In line with the main festival’s theme, the students will be performing plays revolving around ‘comedy’.
    “It is very nice to know that in some of the colleges, students themselves have written scripts or adapted the plays from different languages.”
    “Some of them are even directing the plays themselves,” adds Keerthi.
Zorab from Christ University has written and is directing the English play Grab himself.

     Though it will be the second time the play will be performed in the college circuit, he says the nervousness and excitement is still the same. “During our intra-collegiate competition Darpan, we had performed the play and won accolades.”
   “Considering we had exams, we thought we could go ahead with the same play for the competition as well. Though we wouldn’t call it an out-and-out comedy, we would like to say it is subtle humour.”

Plays will be conducted in English and Kannada.
     The all-student-theatre-group from the St Joseph’s Arts and Science College is the Maya Moogu team.

      The young director, Vinay from St Joseph’s, says that the one thing they are looking forward to is interacting with other students from different colleges, “What’s really nice is that we can actually ask our college audience to take a look at the talent in other colleges and vice-versa. Usually in a competition, there will be just one venue but this way, we get to play the host and a guest in the entire competition,” says Vinay, whose play Maya Moogu will try to laugh at the seriousness of a given situation.

The main aim of the competition is to promote theatre at the college-level.
    The curator of the festival, S Surendranath, says, “Through the competition, we hope to bring an interest in youngsters, so that they continue to do theatre even after they leave the college.”

At the end of the competition, two prizes will be announced. The winners and the runners-up will win trophies.

     The short-listed colleges are BMS Women's College, National College, Christ College, APS Arts and Science, KLE College, MES Malleswaram, St Joseph’s Arts and Science, Vijaya College and Mount Carmel
College.