Life on the stage

From the albums

This picture was taken during the academic year of 1983-1984. I was in tenth standard then and this photograph was taken for the annual school magazine.

I studied in M E S School, Jayanagar till tenth grade. It was one of the best schools at that time in Jayanagar. Our teachers were always ready to help the students. We had an excellent faculty to coach us in all subjects. There were many sporting and cultural activities and the annual school day function was a gala event.

I represented my school in Kannada debate competitions and was also part of the school drama group. We used to participate in both intra and inter school debate and drama competitions. We never had any fancy names for our group but we had professionals coming in to help us like the late S K Madhava Rao, who was a famous theatre and movie artiste.

Our teacher G S Rama Rao (GSR) also helped in nurturing students in the field of theatre. We learnt all aspects of drama like acting, lighting, dialogue delivery, stage usage, eye contact, audience involvement and so on.

The M E S drama group used to win the inter school drama trophy every year. In 1983, our team won the inter school trophy as usual and we had also received ‘Best actor’ and ‘Best actress’ awards that year, the latter being conferred on me. Some of my friends in the drama group were so inspired by the school initiatives that they went on to make it big in the field of theatre later on.

However, my stint in theatre stopped after school and college. I joined the rat race of the IT industry after doing my Masters in computer application from Central College and worked in an IT company for 20 years.

I still miss all the good old days, especially the time I spent with the theatre group. This photo, which was recently shared by my friend on social media, brought back all the memories of my school drama group and the acting skills that I learnt there.

Vijayalakshmi Shivaram
(The author can be contacted at [e-mail])