At ease on the stage

Abhinaya, the theatre festival organised by the students of Jain University-CMS, saw many students and youngsters performing on stage. The final round was held at the Jagriti Theatre. 

The competition of short plays in Kannada saw as many as 20 teams participating and four teams were selected to perform at the finale. Rangavartila, a group from JSS Dharwad, bagged the first place.

A mix of young theatre artistes as well as students took part in the fest. The students said that they find theatre a powerful tool of expression and one that can bring about a change. It also acts as a catalyst and addresses critical domestic, global, personal and professional issues. Madan, a student, noted that the biggest challenge for them was to convince colleges to get their theatre teams to perform on stage. “Theatre, I feel is not very popular among the youth and though many of them do watch plays, they don’t have a team of their own. It took a long time for us to convince the colleges to form their own teams and participate in our festival,” he said.

“However, we did manage to get quite a good number of participants and many people came to see our show. Organising a fest is a huge challenge and though our teachers guided us to a great extent, we managed to present the show all by ourselves. Our organising team was extremely cooperative and all of us worked very hard to make the fest a successful one. The preparations started two months prior to the show and we started sending invitations to colleges quite early,” he informs.

Different groups chose different themes for their plays. While some chose issues pertaining to the youth, others had topical issues for the play. The packed hall appreciated the efforts of each group.

Prateek, a student who was a part of the organising group, pointed out that fests like these give students an opportunity to learn and meet new people. 

 “We learnt a lot while we were on the job, there were ups and downs but we handled each situation patiently. We learnt skills like teamwork, time management etc. We received a great response from the participants as well as others who had come to watch the play. But the best part of the fest was the people we met. There were so many talented people who had come and meeting them was very nice,” he says.