Picture credits: Arsalan photography & artistry
Everyone is an actor at heart. Teach them some lines and put them up on the stage, almost everybody will blow your mind away. That is what happened on the first day of the event held by the IBA Dramatics Society also known as The Naatak Brigade, the 'Intra-IBA Dramatics Competition'. A total of fourteen teams participated in this event, doing their very best to grasp as many of the prizes at hand like the Best Play Award, the Best Director Award, Best Actor male, Best actor female and so on. . This contest was a chance given to the students to show their performing skills in teams and wage war against all the other participating teams for the ultimate prize; being crowned 'The Fringe Champions'. To make the event even more attractive in the eyes of the student body, the Dramatics Society decided to present their renowned plays "Kuttey" and "Juloos" which were Drama fest winners 2012 and Drama fest Runners-up 2013 respectively; both directed by Saad Ahmed Qazi, the Manager of The Naatak Brigade.
The Society went full length to make their event successful, decorating the Main Campus Auditorium with spooky lights, balloons and also using creepy crawlies like spiders and rats(not real ones thankfully!) create an aura of excitement and spread the thrill of the unexpected. The sponsors, California Pizza and Karachi Broast, had their stalls set up outside the auditorium, along with the Lipton stall, which even held a competition about how well you know your best friend, giving away exciting prizes like tickets to the Atrium Cinemas and vouchers for Bar-BQ Tonight. On entering the auditorium, everyone was handed neon bands to wear as bracelets. Some enthusiastic students collected several and formed head bands instead, so that in the dark it looked like there were colorful circles bobbing in the crowd. The hosts kept the audience entertained throughout the plays, even venturing out to the food stalls to haul the hungry people back in, but ended up giving them company in devouring the pizza slices or burgers.
A total of seven teams performed on the first day of The Fringe, and truth be told, each was unique in its own way. While one was intense, the other was just as good in the comical sense, and it can safely be said that the audience had a great time watching their fellows performing and giving them credit for their hard work. It was obvious though, that more than half the students had come mostly just to see the play which recognized The Natak Brigade as the best student led theatre troupe in Pakistan, "Kuttey". Everyone was totally engaged throughout the play, and it was obvious by the end why it had won The Drama fest last year. There were no faults to be found, the dialogues were delivered perfectly and every Acton was perfectly synchronized. Those of you who missed the staging of Kuttey really missed out on something big, as I'm sure their friends who saw it would be telling them for days.
The chief guest of the occasion was Mr. Shah Sharabeel, one of the most notorious theatre artists of the state with an experience of over 20 years. He is known for directing famous productions like "Bombay Dreams", "Moulin Rouge", "Tom, Dick & Harry" and "Phantom of The Opera" .Moreover, Mr.Tipu Sharif, the popular Pakistani actor originally from Turkey was also present there. He seemed really delighted with the end results of all the hard work everyone had put in making the overall event a success, and he certainly didn’t seem to mind posing with fervent students for numerous pictures; no one really let such chances go, do they? Apart from these two personalities, Dr.Framji Minwalla, the Chairperson of The Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts at IBA also attended the event.
Judging by the audiences' reaction to each performance and by the enthusiasm with which they talked about each of these performances, the first day clearly seemed like a huge success, from 'Umeed-e-Seher' to 'Barzakh' and from 'Brain Masala' to 'Daku Raja' along with 'Jaal', 'Letters for Her' and 'La Hasil'. Everyone had a great time eating fast food and talking to the numerous actors, congratulating them on their work and having photographs taken. Overall, due to the Management Team's hard work and the participating teams' determination to win, the day ended on a good note, leaving everyone eager to see what was in store for them the next day, along with the staging of the famous play, 'Juloos'. It was obviously going to be hard to come up with one specific winner. Congratulations to the dramatics society for pulling up such a successful event.
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