Theatre Auditions 2012-13 !!

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......