16 September, 2011
All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. I
could not have used a more clichéd line to start my account on the theatre auditions but we in the
Cultural Committee
are a
strong believer in mediocrity and I personally lack all the panache
of even a mediocre writer. So as I dwell
in
the intricate
corners of my mind to remember that fateful day when we organised the theatre
auditions, it but makes me laugh to think that all the mediocrity
was
washed down by some
awesome, kickass performances. Considering we are law students, we generally have enough spare time to pursue our varied passions. Theatre enthusiasts are an integral part of NUJS, the drunken parties, the tales of debauchery, the opinionated
debates, the illogical moots, each and every one of them requires a thorough and strong knowledge of basic dramatics and
this was very nicely illustrated at the auditions.
I was offered the prestigious honour of hosting the audition (read *threatened to do it*) which I
enthusiastically accepted (read *had no other
choice*). I must
confess, the audience turnout was not
expected to be that huge. But this was not going to stop our young little theatre soldiers. The whole exercise was divided into two rounds, the first consisted of a monologue which the contestants had to prepare beforehand and the second
round was an impromptu one in which the contestants were divided into teams and given weird scenarios to act out. The audition
began
with an ever pleasant rendition
of
a
Shakespearean work by a first year. It was either Romeo and Juliet, Julius Ceaser or Hamlet (The only Shakespeare plays I know... and now that I come to think of it could have been Macbeth).
From my immense literary knowledge on Shakespeare's
work, I could definitely say that the performance easily captured the essence of the whole scene. But our contestants were not going to
restrict themselves to the conventional style of auditioning. They went ahead and performed monologues
from many classic films which have a cult following. Films like American Psycho,
Inglorious Basterds, Braveheart.
Yours truly also tried his luck with the auditions. I tried to do an Alan Shore but ultimately forgot my lines and was shown off the stage with a few sympathetic claps.
One very special feature of the audition was the different array of accents that was on display. We
had Aniket Ghosh of the second year doing a wee bit of Scottish accent and playing Braveheart, we had
Joachim Saldhana pulling off an impeccable English accent and reciting Lord Mountbatten's speech, and we had Utkarsh Meena of first year with an outstanding
Gujarati accent,
playing Brad Pitt from Inglorious Basterds. Shashvat Arya of the second year acted out the opening scene of Gulaal and had most of the audience convinced that a separate Rajputana sovereignty is the best
thing the country needs
right now. Mohit Prasad
did a fun little one sided conversation of a boyfriend who longed for a break-up. And our very own Rituraj did an Amitabh impression (which was creepily very
accurate). The weirdness reached
its pinnacle when Vineet Bhalla opted to act out the classic scene from American Psycho
in which Christian Bale kills his first victim; not only Bhalla but also the victim (Shashvat) did a
fabulous job.
The teams for the second round were eventually divided and they were given fifteen minutes to
prepare a short play on situations given to them. During the fifteen minutes a short film directed by
the
judge was shown to the audience.
The impromptu round was a huge success, showing that the students in our college have an awesome sense
of humour, the most memorable amongst
them was of Aniket, Prateek and Mohit about *ahem* girls in boy's hostel *ahem* (we would like to state that all views expressed by the contestants were their alone and the Cult
Com does not endorse or support
any of them) which was freakishly funny. After the audition, the judges invited all the contestants
in
a classic theatre circle and gave them the feedback.
Everyone returned a better actor that day.
Divyanshu.......
