Campus Reality Show

Talk gets a ringside view of the auditions for various performing arts societies in Delhi University complete with tears and tantrums.

Wearing a plain white shirt and blue denims, Abhinav Sharma turned up for the auditions of the dramatics society of Hansraj College on a sunny afternoon. In an open space on the campus, with 50 students sitting in circle around him and staring at him, the teenager says, "I want to be a part of the dramatics society because I don't want to be scared of rejections in life." He claims to have also auditioned for a movie some time ago.

A first-year BA Programme student, Sharma is one of the many who want to be part of the college's dramatics society after being inspired by its most famous alumni — actor Shah Rukh Khan. The audience is impressed after he enacts the character of Rizwan from My Name is Khan — his eyes stare at the ground nervously while his head moves in a peculiar manner.

So what are the criteria for getting selected for the society? Its president, Pranav Sachdev, says, "One should have good acting skills but that is not the sole requirement. We also look for people who are sincere and possess confidence, have a loud voice, a certain level of awareness, spontaneity and intelligence." Finally, Sharma emerges as one of the 20 students to have been selected out of 150. But not everyone has a happy ending.

The auditions for the college dramatics societies are as dramatic as ever. The general drill is to ask the aspirants to talk about the happiest and saddest moments in their lives. While replies such as "I want to be like Kareena Kapoor one day" and "I want to act in films" are common, some students tend to get too emotional while enumerating their saddest moments. Ujjwala Sharma's confessions were accompanied with tears when she said that her saddest moment was when she scored 94.5 per cent instead of 95 per cent, and therefore, couldn't get admission into the course of her choice — Economics honours.

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