Reflections - drama and dialogue

It all began when the counsellor called us for a meeting in the auditorium. We were present during the first meeting. Then the strength slowly reduced and it came to nine. Then five signed in after sometime. We got together only after a week to discuss the play. We put forward many ideas. There were a lot of contradictions in our ideas. Later we came to know that all our ideas had the same base, and that was Freedom. We decided to represent daily happenings in our play.

After deciding on "what" we were going to do in our play, we decided "how" we could do it. We thought of Stone Age man who travels through time and how he would find things different in this present world. We thought more on this topic. We wanted

primitive man to interact with the mind of the people. Hence we evolved the character "Mind", who was our narrator. We began practising scene by scene. We practised the whole play only once in the auditorium. Then we had to get ready for the big day, the play at the KFI (The School). We titled our play "The Mirror" because we felt that the stage reflected the happenings of real life. We decided that ours would be a street play (a play where one person takes up many roles). We decided that our costumes would be white.

We also rehearsed at the KFI. We found that there were lots of similarities between our play and others at the KFI. We had a choreography to end our play.

On the day of the drama, all of us felt nervous. We skipped a number of scenes and dialogues. Yet as no one in the audience knew the whole play, no one knew what we had missed and there was a lot of impromptu dialogue and adjustments when we enacted the play.

The panel discussion followed and we received a lot of appreciation and we were asked a lot of questions as to what "we meant by freedom", "how we evolved the play" and "how we had arrived at the title". On the last day of the festival we had a day for "drama and dialogues". During the morning session we were put into different groups with students of other schools. Each group had to enact a play. There were a lot of innovative ideas which evolved.

We made a lot of friends. We learnt drama and elocution skills, but the experience also enriched our personalities.

R. KARTHIK, XII A

T.I. MATRICULATION H S SCHOOL, Ambattur, Chennai

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