The day I walked into NUJS, I had various
first impressions of the students - brainy, some brawny, beautiful and
witty. But never did I think they'd be dramatic. Well, when you think 'law
school', you don't really think 'theatrics', do you?
But on 30th July, this bunch of theatre enthusiasts
surprised me, and the audience too.
The first round, the monologue, started
off with Anish from the third year, doing a literally wicked rendition of the
devil, entertaining and amusing. Mansi from the second year did a touching
scene from the movie, Dor, spell-binding and mesmerizing the audience. Next, we
had Meenakshi, who portrayed an amusing role of a gorgeous woman, who had men fighting for her attention. Then the audience enjoyed disarmingly witty, satirical
self-penned monologues and impromptu's delivered by Anirudh Vohra and Joachim
Saldanha, and a rather crazy, toe-curling performance by Swaroop, who acted as
a drug addict, writhing on stage and screaming, leaving us all quite spooked,
quite impressed. There was a hilarious satirical monologue about how wives
constantly, inexplicably "collect things", by Srishti Goyal, who was very
much in character with her bushy moustache, as the distressed husband of a wife
with an OCD for collections. From the first years, Archit Krishna did a scene
from a play which depicts the anger of the common man against corruption, and
he performed it with such expertise, such rawness, that the audience shivered
at his every word. Then up came Akshaya, portraying a hilarious British actress
rehearsing for a role in a play by Shaw, making the students laugh and roar in
applause. We had Jessamine do Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking scene from the
Shakespearean play, spine-chilling and brilliant. Shakespeare was a popular
choice this year, with various renditions of Caesar, Caesar, and, um.. Caesar.
Hang on, Aishwaria Iyer did a dialogue from Merchant of Venice, with amazing
vocal transitions. We had enactments from movies like Any Given Sunday and Singing in the Rain.
Finally, Surbhi Dhar played a serial killer, with a love for 6-foot tall men in
suits, and Inderjeet Sircar (Pipo), doing a stand-up comedy, bringing a rib-cracking funny end
to the first round.
Due to the long list of enthusiastic
participants (there were twenty-four, might I add) the second round only
started at around ten. The second round was the group round, where the
participants were given certain topics, and had to perform a skit in about
fifteen minutes, with ten minutes prep time and about three minutes of performance.
Since we were short of time, every group had to hurriedly perform their skit,
resulting in hilarious errors and omissions, and strange unrehearsed dialogues.
It was a hilarious ordeal, with one group acting out auditions, another as Project Majnu, the moral police, and another as
our very own NUJS, with a visitor as our very own - Mamta Bannerjee.
Hysterical, would be the right word to describe this round.
Well, for all you awesome aspiring actors
and actresses out there, those who were there with us for the auditions, thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to witness your brilliance, and the ones who missed out, make sure you try out for the team next year !!
And the NUJS University Theatre Team 2012-13 is:
POOL A
Aishwaria Iyer
Akshaya Venkataraman
Anirudh Vohra
Archit Krishna
Arindrajeet Basu
Devhuti Shaw
Joachim Saldhana
Mansi Jhaveri
Srishti Goyal
Tapobrata
POOL B
Issac John
Meenakshi Kurpad
Paavni Anand
Satchit Bhogle
Surabhi Dhar
Shruti Nanivadekar......
