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.