This is a new series in my blog – about my theatre days. Actually these days starts right from my 3rd standard when I started acting in the school plays like the Three Kings who brings gift to Jesus Christ, Panchali Sabhatham (Draupadi Vastra Haran), Little Peta Rabbit and so on. I am going to tag this under the head AVALON DAYS named after my theatre group Avalon Theatre Productions. There are several funny incidences on and off the stage during the plays, short film shoots and cast parties. Everything will be penned down here. Hope this will put a smile on your face, to start with let me tell you about Draupadi Vastra Haran drama.
This is the play we did during my 6th Standard at School. Most of you know the story where the Pandavas play the game of dice with the Gauravas and they will lose everything they had and finally pledge Draupadi/Panchali and lose her as well, then she will brought to the courtyard and will be stripped by the evil Dukshadana. What happened was, as it’s a boys school (yeah unfortunately I was put in a boys school from 6th to 12th) the Draupadi role was played by a girl like boy who was very thin, the Dukshadhan character was played by a very rough and tough boy. I played the role of Arjuna, I am always given an ordinary role, one in the corner with just one or two lines of dialogues. During the rehearsals we didn’t had the saree tied on Draupadi so it was just an air action then. On the day of the play, the primary school teacher brought two sarees in the same color and pinned it and tied it on the guy who played Draupadi and mind you he had his uniform shorts inside it. She also strictly warned the guy who played Dukshadhan not to pull the saree with force and told him to over act and does it slowly till the music stops (the background music was from some old movie). So everything was set we were on stage. Let me give a live commentary on the specific incident;
This is the play we did during my 6th Standard at School. Most of you know the story where the Pandavas play the game of dice with the Gauravas and they will lose everything they had and finally pledge Draupadi/Panchali and lose her as well, then she will brought to the courtyard and will be stripped by the evil Dukshadana. What happened was, as it’s a boys school (yeah unfortunately I was put in a boys school from 6th to 12th) the Draupadi role was played by a girl like boy who was very thin, the Dukshadhan character was played by a very rough and tough boy. I played the role of Arjuna, I am always given an ordinary role, one in the corner with just one or two lines of dialogues. During the rehearsals we didn’t had the saree tied on Draupadi so it was just an air action then. On the day of the play, the primary school teacher brought two sarees in the same color and pinned it and tied it on the guy who played Draupadi and mind you he had his uniform shorts inside it. She also strictly warned the guy who played Dukshadhan not to pull the saree with force and told him to over act and does it slowly till the music stops (the background music was from some old movie). So everything was set we were on stage. Let me give a live commentary on the specific incident;
Fast forwarding the initial scenes we are now at the scene where Draupadi is in the court yard and us the Pandavas all having our heads bent, Dukshadhan starts to pull the saree and Draupadi calls for our help, and we are not helping her as we were slaves ourselves, so she calls Lord Krishna and Lord Krishna appears (he was my class leader hmph). So Dukshadan started pulling the saree bit by bit, we can see it going and going but unfortunately the final pin was not intact with the Draupadi’s shorts that the saree came out fully and Draupadi was standing there with shorts.
The entire school started laughing. The guy who played Draupadi was so embarrassed, that’s when our Arjuna came to the rescue with his presence of mind, he stood up and said, “Hail Krishna, the mighty lord, you are simply great, you have given shorts to Draupadi to protect her modesty, Jai Sri Krishna…” the whole college burst into laughter and claps and whistles were on my way. After this I always got the plump roles…
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