Students entertain receptive audience with Shakespeare

Students entertain receptive audience with Shakespeare

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

"Nothing can be bad when simpleness and duty tender it."
The quotation from the last act of a drama staged by students
from the English department of Atmajaya University last weekend
sounded like a perfect wrap-up of their theatrical attempt.

After all, the play, based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream, was played by amateurs, not professionals.

Therefore it would not be fair to judge it by professional
standards.

Yet, the students, from sophomores to graduates, somehow
managed to entertain dozens in the audience quite well at the
American Club, South Jakarta.

The play was about love, both mutual and unrequited, among
mortals and gods.

The characters like merry, mischievous Puck, persistent and
desperate Helena, and donkey-headed Bottom, were quite familiar
to the audience as the play has been staged many times by theater
groups around the world, as well as being turned into a motion
picture.

This particular production by Atmajaya did not include special
modification of the script. To make the play simpler, the
university used the modernized script from No Fear Shakespeare,
published by Barnes & Noble.

However, a few improvised lines drew chuckles and laughter
and, in the end, generated enthusiastic applause.

Played by about 20 actors and actresses, some of the English
students showed that they must have had good marks in their
pronunciation class. However, some did not project their voices
strongly enough, such that some lines were unintelligible.

"We wanted to involve a wide range of students, so some
sophomores, who did not yet possess pronunciation skills as
strong as the others, also participated," English department head
at the university Nilawati Hadisantosa told The Jakarta Post.

All in all, the play was entertaining and, at the same time, a
good way to practice English while enjoying the comedy from one
of Britain's greatest playwrights.

"After seeing us perform, the American Club has asked us to
stage plays twice a year," Nilawati said.