Unbridled Expressions

The 3^rd Atelier Youth Theatre Week was held from 15^th– 21^st November. Organised by Atelier Expressions, the week-long event offered college teams a chance to perform in front of audiences outside of the regular competitive fests. 10 street plays and 10 stage plays were chosen from among various college entries through rigorous line-reading sessions.

Asmita Theatre’s “Ambedkar Aur Gandhi” was the opening play at the Hotel Ashok amphitheatre on the 15th. The next two days were devoted entirely to street plays. Colleges from across campus performed plays that dealt with a broad variety of problems, from drugs to terrorism to poverty to time-wastage. Colleges on the first day were Hansraj, Khalsa, SRCC and Kamla Nehru and Hindu College. The second day’s teams were Sri Venkateshwara, IP College, JMC, Lady Irwin and LSR.

The last three days saw college teams as well as professional groups performing stage plays at the Sri Ram Centre. LSR was the first to perform its English play “Hairy tales from Here and There”, followed by SRCC with “Maujood”, “Kindertransport” performed by Miranda House and finally “Lights Out” by Gargi College. These were followed by a professional performance of “iLHAM” by the aRanya Theatre Group.

The next day started with Hansraj performing “A Million Little Pieces”, followed by Hindu with a Hindi adaptation of “The Black Comedy”, Ramjas with “On a Muggy Night in Mumbai” and Kamla Nehru with “Bravely Fought the Queen”. The day ended with Atelier and Ankur’s professional performance of “Antigone”.

The last day of the festival opened with “Aadhe Adhure”, performed by Hansraj, followed by Deen Dayal Upadhyay College’s “Gul-Guli Circus”, “Bombshells” by Gargi College and finally “Romeo Juliet Aur Andhera” performed by Khalsa. The final theatrical performance was “The Leela Tapes” performed by the Actor Factor Theatre Company.

The 3^rd AYTW was attended by well-known theatre personalities such as Piyush Misra, Saurabh Shukla Gul Panag, Lushin Dubey and Vinay Pathak. They not only watched the plays, but also offered their feedback and advice to the performing teams. The closing ceremony was held at Turquoise Cottage, with a headline performance by Them Clones, who were supported by U8 Noise, the winners of the Rock Castle Acoustic Hunt.