Udaan, a performing arts festival organized by the Manchatantra Creations, powered by Manchatantra, the dramatics society of Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce that kicked off on February 1 concluded on February 2 with the prize distribution ceremony.

The festival started off with ‘People’- the Street Play competition. The competition saw participation by the street play teams of Shri Guru Teg Bahadur Khalsa College, Hindu College, SRCC, Jesus and Mary College, Indraprastha College for Women, ARSD College, LSR College, Shivaji College, CBS, Daulat Ram College, PGDAV College, and Hansraj College. The plays centered around relevant issues such as  the Indian judicial system (performed by Shivaji College’s dramatics society Vayam), the concept and relevance of religion in the contemporary world (brought forth by the annual production ‘Dharma’ by Khalsa), the phenomenon of ‘Whistle-Blowing’ (staged by Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies’ street play society Verve), the inevitable human tendency of constantly wanting something or the other (brought to light by Hansraj through the play titled ‘Laalsa’),the faulty application of the virtues of the Indian constitution based on our own assumptions of it (enacted by the dramatics society of Hindu College) and many more. The competition was won by the Daulat Ram College while SGTB Khalsa College took away the second prize for its play ‘Dharma’.

The street play competition was followed by ‘Soul’ the Choreography competition which too saw participation by a number of teams from campus. The choreo team of Sri Venkateswara College won the competition.

To involve the audience in the fest, along with these two main events, a number of mini events were also held on day 1. The most challenging one of these was ‘Tongue Twister’ in which participants had to take out a chit from a bowl on which was written a tongue twister which they were supposed to repeat 10 times. The winners were given Snap Deal and Worlds of Wonder vouchers.

‘Voice Crack’ was another such event in which two participants competed against each other and the task was to stretch the given word as much as they could. The ‘Cinema Quiz’, again meant for the audience was a big hit as the participants put to test their knowledge of Bollywood.

‘Click’, the photography competition, was held across the first two days of the fest. The theme of the competition was ‘Moments of the fest’. Participants were supposed to submit 5 best clicks of the fest. Nishant Verma won the first prize while Tushar Sareen from Shivaji College took away the second prize.

Day 2 saw some enigmatic performances during ‘Razzmatazz’-the Western Dance competition which was followed by ‘Street Fight’- the street dance competition. The western dance team of SGGSCC won the Razzmatazz while the girls of Maitreyi College, dressed in sparkling blue outfits won the hearts of the audience by putting up a scintillating performance on numbers like ‘Naadan Parinde’ and also took away the second prize.

Street Fight was won by Bhartiya Vidyapeeth while SBIT stood second in the same.

Manchatantra Creations is the brainchild of Aniket Jaiswal, an alumna of the dramatics society of Hansraj College. After passing out of the college he worked extensively with the dramatics society of Gargi College and for the past three years he has been working with Manchatantra, the dramatics society of SGGSCC. He has given theatre workshops to children in the Nizzamuddin basti and made a theatre production for them on Sanitation. Talking about the festival he said, “Organizing this event was like a dream. We’ve been practicing here in Dilli Haat for three years and holding ‘Udaan’ here has made the festival more special.” The festival concluded successfully on February 3. “Ab toh iss TV Tower ki aadat ho gai hai”, he joked.

Shweta Arora
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Mannat Sandhu
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