I have been passionate about acting since my early childhood. It has been a thrilling experience since the first time I stepped on the stage to perform a monologue on Shakespear’s LADY MACBETH.

The Drama that I was preparing this year was called “Wrong number”. Had a new drama teacher in my school, new people to work with and a very new and different style of drama called “experimental play”. This journey had to be difficult and different from other performances I have ever done before and it turned out to be as I expected.

22nd December we performed the play in inter-school competition, then on 23rd February we performed in the “Rashtriya Kala Kendra organised Drama competition”. As our play stood first, the school held a couple of more performances for the school staff and students across a period of a few months.

Challenged faced during the process:
1) Adjusting with peers and teacher
It was a three-person script only. We all possessed different skills and were unique in our own ways so on the basis of that we decided the roles that each of us would get. Though we had a mutual decision as the rehearsal began there were clashes regarding who suits which character better, we wasted a few rehearsal slots coming o the conclusion which bought a drift among all of us as well as the teacher. There were situations which should have been handled by the teacher but he did not do anything and let us handle it which lead to an unhealthy environment, the play started to fall apart. We decided communication was the key to solve things out and honesty was what was required. I took the lead to be courageous and honest about what mistakes were being made and how the path that we were going on is not correct. The entire team met and we discussed things out with each other, shared our feelings. Communication is the best way to solve things is what I believe in and this belief strengthened.

2) Learning new skills and adapting to the process
As I mentioned earlier the style of the play was unique and something that nor I or the others had done before, all of us were doing an experimental play for the very first time. The rehearsal schedule was difficult and the play was demanding, we had to completely indulge in the story and understand the character in depth to be able to bring it on stage effectively. With the academic pressure of grade 11, it was difficult at times to completely focus on the play while not thinking of anything else. Being a female playing the role of a male professor who was in his late sixties was a difficult role to perform. To understand the psyche of the professor was challenging and the most difficult part as to be able to learn voice modulation, catch the perfect pitch an tone and be able to play with the variations of the script. Learning the skills took time and patience, lost hop a lot of time, gave up due to the difficulties but got back up every time as I knew I had to reach the goal.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strengths: My understanding of the context and background is strong as after reading the script twice I was able to make connections to what is required to be done on the stage by each character. Our teacher explained to us quite a few ties regarding the script demand. I was able to grasp it faster than others so I worked as a support system by helping others work on their performance and understand the demands.
Weakness: Improvisation is required whenever you perform theater as we are not robots it is quite possible that someone forgets their dialogues or skips a scene in that situation the other actors have to handle the play. My improvisation is well when it comes to solo performance, but group performance is the area where I lack improvisation skills. This play helped me cope up with the weakness as every time we performed the play there were instances that my partner forgot lines and I had to cover up. There were times when I forgot lines and she had to cover-up, in this situation it was important for me to come on track after she improvised.

Commitment and its importance:

Commitment and dedication towards the play led us to achieve the award and the recognition for our school. Commitment helps stay focus and motivated towards any task you perform and hence the full potential of the person comes out to the audience if the commitment is shown from the first step towards the goal. To achieve what you desire and bring out the best work that you have committed is required as focus leads to success.

Ethics Involved:
The writer of the play is Mr.Yogesh Soman and we had to take his permission before doing his play. Our teacher did the work necessary for the same and got permission. We had recognised the global issue of academic honesty and hence taking the writers approval was a must and the play was based on the lack of ethics in the world of business, so we wanted to deliver it to the audience is the most simplistic manner we could and as directly as we could.