The Oasis English Press sat down with Saumitra Thakur, the coordinator of the Hindi Drama Club (HDC), to learn more about the work they are doing for the upcoming fest.

Every Oasis, HDC alternates between a stage play and a street play to participate in the respective competitions organised by the Department of Theatre. Last Oasis, the club had won the stage play competition for their production ‘Asurim,’ but this time the club has shifted its style and is focusing on developing an original street play. The last time the club performed a street play was back in 2019, during the pre-COVID era. Saumitra accepted that this was indeed a challenge for the club because no current acting member of the club had seen or participated in a street play before. The directors for the play, Chinmay Pushkar and Saumya Nagpal, added that to get over this hurdle, they contacted their seniors who had performed street plays during their time on campus. Besides this, they spent countless hours watching street plays from different colleges to understand their structure. Saumitra revealed that the club had started preparing for Oasis over the summer break, beginning with the writing process.

When asked if he felt pressured to match last year’s expectations of winning once again, Saumitra said that he did not view it as a challenge. He said that instead, the club had focused on delivering their best and meeting all the standards that his seniors had set. The directors added that they had given their best shot to prepare for this competition and would not settle for anything low.

Talking about his experience in the club, Saumitra said he had come a long way from having to attend online theatre sessions during the pandemic to organising houseful shows on campus. During his time in the club, they had also expanded to English theatre, starting by performing one English musical during Amalgam 1.0 and two more English plays during Amalgam 2.0

Concluding the interview, Saumitra stressed that the interaction between the audience and the performing clubs has been an integral part of BITSian culture for a very long time. He ended by saying that he wanted the audience to keep on actively supporting not only the drama, but all performing clubs to keep the performing culture on campus alive and strong.