My First Theatre Experience
Phew! It’s summer all right. The exams have been busted and it’s time to soak up and enjoy the pleasures of life. ‘But who can stand sitting idle for a couple of months like parasites?’
So, it’s time for teens like us to explore and experiment with various things, try our hands at different skills or just master that one skill we’ve always had the knack for.
While there are the usual options like swimming, dancing, singing, cricket and football to bust the summer heat and boredom, some opt for rather unusual ones like dirt bike racing, kalaripayattu, horse riding and gardening. Well, I really can’t decide as to which of the two categories to put theatre under but I can definitely vouch for one thing—it’s bin a lot of fun!
This is my first tryst with theatre and BEYOND THE LAND OF HATTAMALA, being produced under the URJA banner, is my first play. This has not only offered me a plethora of opportunities but also has been a wonderful learning ground. It is here that I’ve learnt my ABCs of theatre and taken my first few tiny steps in this vast field.
URJA the Sanskrit equivalent of ‘ENERGY’ is a very inspirational banner and the people here are bustling with energy and enthusiasm, and it didn’t take long for it to rub off on me too. It was almost three weeks ago that I first met my fellow actors and cast members, a team of highly talented professionals. My initial perception was that anybody with a sound voice can hit it off in theatre, but over the ensuing weeks, as I saw the toil, sweat, effort and hard work involved in making and staging a play, I realized that, like everywhere else in life, in theatre also the 3 Ds that help one succeed are Determination, Dedication and Discipline. I also realized that no one is born with an inbuilt software that ensures that one shall excel in theatre. It is just hard work and perseverance that helps one make the most of whatever skill one has, thus paving the way for excellence.
Work on this play began almost a month ago. The first stage was the ‘Reading’ of the play where we could get familiar with the lines and the basic structure of the play. Next came ‘Blocking’, this was when we experimented with our moves and worked on the choreography. During the next week we dropped our scripts and fixed our moves. At every stage new ideas emerged which were adapted to our needs and improvised upon. The rehearsals were always enlivened by the hilarious theatre games we always found time to play, be it “Baby Shark Tu Tu…” or “Making melodies……”.These games always had us in splits of laughter. Amidst all this came the very exciting photo shoot which was held at CFD (Centre for Film and Drama).We got into our stage gear and enacted lively scenes to pose for the camera.
Then as we swung into the last fortnight, the work we had to do just piled up. What with the painting of props, altering costumes, putting up posters, printing of tickets, going to the press for publicity! The enthusiasm began to build up, but so did the rigour of our rehearsals. We had rigourous run throughs, and worked on the detailing. We learnt that the devil is in the detail. On the eve of the show we had a run through right here at Ranga Shankara, sweetened by Payal’s delicious chocolate cake.
Well, I’ve enjoyed as well as learnt a lot all this while and hope to continue to do so. But I’ve had my fair share of problems as well, battling with my speech pattern, delivery of dialogues, projection, intonation etc. I’ve consciously tried hard to improve, so let’s wait and see if it has worked. But there has been a lot of help, support and guidance at every step that has encouraged me to put in that extra bit each time. Every body in the Hattamala Team was extremely supportive and they patiently did and re did scenes just so that I could correct my mistakes. But the best part about all of this was that everyone was open and welcomed new ideas and readily tried them out. Well working with or rather like Divya likes to call it ‘interning with URJA’ has been a fantastic experience and one that’ll be really hard to forget. So then, see you in Beyond the Land of Hattamala, every night this week at 7:30 at RANGA SHANKARA.
----Nivedita Sudheer (Chitti)
15 years 11 months
Phew! It’s summer all right. The exams have been busted and it’s time to soak up and enjoy the pleasures of life. ‘But who can stand sitting idle for a couple of months like parasites?’
So, it’s time for teens like us to explore and experiment with various things, try our hands at different skills or just master that one skill we’ve always had the knack for.
While there are the usual options like swimming, dancing, singing, cricket and football to bust the summer heat and boredom, some opt for rather unusual ones like dirt bike racing, kalaripayattu, horse riding and gardening. Well, I really can’t decide as to which of the two categories to put theatre under but I can definitely vouch for one thing—it’s bin a lot of fun!
This is my first tryst with theatre and BEYOND THE LAND OF HATTAMALA, being produced under the URJA banner, is my first play. This has not only offered me a plethora of opportunities but also has been a wonderful learning ground. It is here that I’ve learnt my ABCs of theatre and taken my first few tiny steps in this vast field.
URJA the Sanskrit equivalent of ‘ENERGY’ is a very inspirational banner and the people here are bustling with energy and enthusiasm, and it didn’t take long for it to rub off on me too. It was almost three weeks ago that I first met my fellow actors and cast members, a team of highly talented professionals. My initial perception was that anybody with a sound voice can hit it off in theatre, but over the ensuing weeks, as I saw the toil, sweat, effort and hard work involved in making and staging a play, I realized that, like everywhere else in life, in theatre also the 3 Ds that help one succeed are Determination, Dedication and Discipline. I also realized that no one is born with an inbuilt software that ensures that one shall excel in theatre. It is just hard work and perseverance that helps one make the most of whatever skill one has, thus paving the way for excellence.
Work on this play began almost a month ago. The first stage was the ‘Reading’ of the play where we could get familiar with the lines and the basic structure of the play. Next came ‘Blocking’, this was when we experimented with our moves and worked on the choreography. During the next week we dropped our scripts and fixed our moves. At every stage new ideas emerged which were adapted to our needs and improvised upon. The rehearsals were always enlivened by the hilarious theatre games we always found time to play, be it “Baby Shark Tu Tu…” or “Making melodies……”.These games always had us in splits of laughter. Amidst all this came the very exciting photo shoot which was held at CFD (Centre for Film and Drama).We got into our stage gear and enacted lively scenes to pose for the camera.
Then as we swung into the last fortnight, the work we had to do just piled up. What with the painting of props, altering costumes, putting up posters, printing of tickets, going to the press for publicity! The enthusiasm began to build up, but so did the rigour of our rehearsals. We had rigourous run throughs, and worked on the detailing. We learnt that the devil is in the detail. On the eve of the show we had a run through right here at Ranga Shankara, sweetened by Payal’s delicious chocolate cake.
Well, I’ve enjoyed as well as learnt a lot all this while and hope to continue to do so. But I’ve had my fair share of problems as well, battling with my speech pattern, delivery of dialogues, projection, intonation etc. I’ve consciously tried hard to improve, so let’s wait and see if it has worked. But there has been a lot of help, support and guidance at every step that has encouraged me to put in that extra bit each time. Every body in the Hattamala Team was extremely supportive and they patiently did and re did scenes just so that I could correct my mistakes. But the best part about all of this was that everyone was open and welcomed new ideas and readily tried them out. Well working with or rather like Divya likes to call it ‘interning with URJA’ has been a fantastic experience and one that’ll be really hard to forget. So then, see you in Beyond the Land of Hattamala, every night this week at 7:30 at RANGA SHANKARA.
----Nivedita Sudheer (Chitti)
15 years 11 months
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