the adventure - finale

After the entire week having gone so well, the last day needed something special to be a fitting end to the eventful first week. It indeed was. Today I completed my first week of work with Script Peoples Theatre and I could not have been more satisfied.

Like every-day, I did not begin with reading the book, today’s task was something different. I needed to reflect upon my theatre journey so far (I had three theatre experiences in the week) and relate it to the book I had been reading. This was a different task. As I began thinking I realised how many of those modules which I had read about, had already sunk into my system, it was a different feeling. I realised that subconsciously I had actually applied a lot of what I had read in my experiences over the week. The following is a part of what I wrote during the session.


“Six days from the beginning of this internship, today, I reflect and think about the various theatre experiences which I have had. I try to relate them with the things which I learned by reading the book Jesus in Blue Jeans. It is a very interesting scenario which I am looking at.

The first experience was when the brothers from Dharmaram College were performing at the college auditorium. It was towards the end of a workshop which the Script Peoples Theatre had conducted for them. They were divided into four groups and were all given chances to practice and perform on stage with full lights and sounds. It was a delight watching them and taking pictures. The entire set up was done in a magnificent manner. That is not what I’m delighted about though. I realised by the end of it that while taking the pictures, I could have stuck to a permanent position from where I could get a good view of the entire stage. But that would have been sticking to a comfort zone. By doing that I could not have captured the beautiful effect that the lights from the various angles were creating. I realised that I had ventured out and not stuck to a comfort zone. In the process I got much better pictures and by the end of it I was more satisfied than I could have been otherwise.

The second such learning was when the same evening I had visited Ranga-Shankara for the presentation of the play Choon-Hyang. It was a play performed by a Korean group and was based on an ancient Korean folk story. The entire concept was very different from the regular plays. The oriental music, traditional dresses, the stage set up, the lights, the songs and dances and most of all the astounding performance of the cast was truly enchanting. It was a great learning experience. I also had to write a review of the as an assignment, for which I needed to click pictures during the performance. I held myself in readiness. I knew that the organisation of Ranga-Shankara was very strict about such things. I could only request them to allow me to click a few pictures. All in vain, I flipped to plan ‘B’. I found a few pictures of the play on the internet and was able to add them to my review. I was ready for the challenge. Although I could not click the pictures myself, I made sure I had the pictures of the play for my review.

Just yesterday, I along with Shivaraj (one of the faculties here) accompanied the law school theatre team of Christ College. It was for an inter – collegiate youth event organised by the University of Bangalore. It was a long wait before the event began, we had problems with the sound, which I was to handle, the crowd was not what we had expected, I was with a group of people to whom I was completely unfamiliar, I did not know the local language, and if nothing else, the rain played spoilt-sport. This was one of the greatest learning experiences as far as the internship has gone so far. But I was ready with the tips from my new found friend, a few lessons from Jesus in Blue Jeans.

I found myself humming through most of the long wait. I literally did not realise how time flew by, while everyone around me seemed to be frustrated by the same. I was in-charge of the sound to be provided for the play and there was a major problem as all the tracks were not in the same format. I was ready for the challenge. I was equipped with my laptop and technical gear and we found a way out of the situation. The entire performance went off smoothly. The crowd surprisingly was not like what we had expected. It was like performing to a group of Maori warriors. They were whistling and screaming and clapping at every second instance. I had never seen crowds like this ever before, more so because my bringing up has been that of a boarding school. The entire group stayed focussed. We did not take small things personally. By doing so, the crowd was only reflecting themselves and it made no difference to us. I was meeting the group for the first time and co-ordinating the sound with them could not have been easy had I not found common ground. I interacted a lot with Shivaraj who had handled things like this before and saw a run through of the play before the final performance. It helped me a lot.
So in all even though we put up a fabulous performance for the not so deserving audience there were several problems we faced. And we did it tactfully.

Now as I said, I have a very fascinating scenario. I could apply all my learning of the book in all the three theatre experiences that I’ve had this week.”


It is a long excerpt and I thought it pretty much summed up for what I felt about the session when I reflected back. I felt different after the entire session. The feeling which had sunk in was really pumping me with tremendous amount of energy. It was a rejuvenating experience.

The second session was another brilliant session. I began work on a compilation of pictures for the students of Dharmaram College. They were the same pictures which I had clicked during their workshop sessions. It again was something new to me and half way through the task I’m really enjoying myself. I’m looking forward to go back on Monday and completing it.

To sum up, it was a very eventful week; I got to learn various things which I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. It was a pleasant start to an even more eventful journey in the days to be. The experience so far has been even better than I had anticipated and I believe that I’m in the right place.

Sentence of the day, ‘By the time you leave this place you shall be more learned in this field than all the rest of us. We shall all keep giving you all the small little things that we know about this field.’ – this truly made my day.