Shot in the arm for campus theatre

In order to spot young talent, Masquerade, a Chennai-based performance group, organised a three-day inter-collegiate theatre festival. ELIZABETH ROY writes...

MASQUERADE, CHENNAI'S performance group showed its sense of generosity and concern for `theatre' in colleges by organising a three-day inter-collegiate theatre festival, Natak. The effort is particularly noteworthy since it comes from an organisation that does not have the privilege of playing opulent, when sponsorship is difficult to track down, when temptation is strong to put the available resources, time and manpower to further their own cause, to turn the lights on their own production.

As K. Krishnakumar who heads Masquerade put it, ``If the buzz of live entertainment activity needs to be sustained, more artistes need to be discovered. Keeping this in mind, a newly re-focussed Masquerade proposed in July 2000 to plan and host an inter- collegiate festival cum competition of theatre productions''. Natak as an ongoing activity hopes to encourage campus theatre groups. One hopes it will create opportunities for them to develop their theatre skills and help them achieve a degree of professionalism. Hopefully it will see in production new plays scripted by students, contemporary interpretations of classics and adaptations.

The participating colleges and Masquerade swore that the exercise was worth the sweat and tears, not to mention the toil.

Of the six colleges that came forward to participate, Ethiraj College, which started to script its own play, could not make it to the festival. The organisers filled in the slot with the much talked about ``Song of Lowena'' from Kalai Rani against a stunningly aesthetic stage setting and some reverberating good percussion from Venu and Pasupathy.

Stella Maris College opened the festival with a very emotionally charged rendering of Mahasweta Devi's ``Bayen''. The group's analysis was sound and they handled the issue with conviction and a sense of commitment. No wonder they walked away with prizes for best production, direction (Anupama Srinivasan), actor (Sheethal Govindan), light design (Shika Bhattacharjee) and sound track (Nasra Roy). Despite the flaws and weaknesses the production had the audience in a tight grip and copious tears.

IIT presented Irwin Shaw's ``Bury the Dead,'' an excellent script with much material for reflection and offering endless challenges. The play perhaps could have been handled better, but they definitely deserved the awards for best make-up (Ashutosh Parande), and the best set- design (Mohan Vamsi) which was quite ingenious and showed skilled thinking.

Then there was Vijay Tendulkar's ``Kanyadan'' from JBAS Women's College and Rabindranath Tagore's ``Chandalika'' from MOP Vaishnav College for Women. MOP Vaishnav walked away with the prizes for best costumes (Deepa R.) and best stage management (Soumya V.). The only original script came from the Women's Christian College, a play within a play mode, contemporarised and set in WCC and moving back and forth in time. The play titled, ``Seven for a Secret,'' won the award for the best script (Shekinah Jebaraj).

The colleges were thrilled with the opportunity that Masquerade created for them. Theatre, they felt, in an outside-the-college forum like this becomes more desirable and challenging. However, many of them confessed that they lacked the technical know-how and would really be grateful if there was someone to empower them in aspects of theatre practice.

While applauding the inter-collegiate theatre festival, I must seek clarification on this whole concept of competition, especially when the odds faced by the groups are unequal. Competition at its best should enable individuals/groups to come up with their best, while constantly pushing the boundaries of excellence.

Merely scoring points over your neighbour is a poor indicator of one's potential or excellence. It would be wonderful if what draws the colleges to Natak would be the privilege and honour of being invited to participate on the basis of potential and competence.

Consequently, to improve the quality of Natak, the participant groups will have to be initiated into the basic skills and aspects of theatre through workshops and training programmes to ensure that they are adequately equipped to take on the challenge. (This suggestion, one realises, does place an unreasonable burden on Masquerade!)

Yet another factor, which contributes to a not-so-level playing field is the desperate shortage of scripts for all women casts. The other side of the argument is that the challenge brought out the best in the women participants: Shekinah Jebaraj scripted a play for her team, which won her the best script award and Sheethal Govindan won the best actor award playing the lead male role.

But then Natak has only begun. In any venture the first time is often the most difficult. The challenge is in that first leap into the plausible. Natak will hopefully be back next year, the richer for the experience. And hopefully the theatre lovers of Chennai will turn up, even for a college theatre festival, to give a hand to the future and to demand excellence that is the audience right.

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