Perfecting every move on stage

The first-year students of School of Law, Christ University, staged the play Othello at the college auditorium recently.

This is an annual feature of the college and once again the students picked a play from Shakespeare and performed exceptionally well.

Talking about the play, Fr Benny Thomas, director, School of Law, explained, “Last year, the students enacted ‘The Merchant of Venice’, which was a huge hit and everybody appreciated the performance. This year too we decided to stage a Shakespeare play.” Right from choosing the play, conceptualising and executing it, the students did it all to perfection.

Fr Benny said, “They are all first-year students and started working on the play since June. In a span of five months, they all have worked hard for this day.”

The show was directed by Esther Yates, who is head of department of performing arts, Christ University.

Fr Benny added, “Esther has trained all these students because none come from theatre background. They are quick learners and have picked up everything well. The play is in old English and we have retained the same language.”

However, getting the accent right was not an easy task, revealed Shashank, a student.
 He said, “We have strong influence of our native language when speaking. We had to overcome this and train to perfect the dialogue delivery. As law students,  we don’t worry too much about these things. But the festival gave us a chance to experience what many of us were not familiar with. The old English is very different and we remember studying
this only in school. So, it was a new learning experience for us.”

Andrew, another student, felt theatre is applicable to people from all walks of life.

He said, “You don’t have to come from Arts or Commerce background to be a part of theatre. Anybody who has interest can be a part of this field. Through the theatre festival, we got a chance to bond with the other law students. We used to come at 10 am for rehearsals and never realised how time flew by.”  The play seemed to have left a lasting impression on the audience. Smeja, a student, said she was inspired to watch more of the play after seeing the students perform

 She added, “I usually don’t watch plays, but I was curious to see how they would put up the show. Be it the live music, lightings or even the costumes, they made it appear so real. They looked like professional theatre artistes on stage. I wish to watch more plays now.”