Mysore:
The Literary Club of St. Philomena’s College, Mysore, presented an astonishing and highly educative literary exhibition during the last weekend.
The English Dept. and Functional English Dept. came together under the banner of the Literary Club to present an event that took students, professors and connoisseurs of Mysore down the memory lane with a series of programmes under the title ‘Shakespeare Festival.’
The programme was a package that comprised a colloquium, interaction session on Shakespeare’s plays, a few competitions with cash prizes and a mind-blowing exposition of 37 plays, sonnets and longer poems of Shakespeare apart from a whole section devoted to Strat-ford-upon-Avon and production of Shakespeare plays in different parts of the world.
The expo was an artfully arranged and slick presentation of over 600 display cards, photographs, snapshots, posters of plays and portraits of almost all major British and European writers influenced by the bard, from the private collection of Prof. B.N. Balajee.
The rich colourful presentation of myths and legends of the western world, lovely pictures of Shakespeare’s flowers and birds along with the dramatic contexts in which they appear in his plays were kept for the visitors’ view.
The exhibition had utilised the Fandex card originals published from New York, pictures and plates from various masterpieces of drama capturing scenes of plays from Shakespeare’s plays through the ages along with unique productions of other European and English plays. It was a feast to students of literature, research scholars and lecturers of English.
Students who had only heard about the Globe Theatre, London and RSC Shakespeare Company Stratford could see the photographs of celebrated actors like Michael Redgrave, Richard Burton, Sir John Gielgud and Laure-nce Olivier. One was surprised to see Indian productions of Sha-kespeare, Berkley production of Harvest and Texas production of Nagamandala.
The picture presented the pillars among Indian playwrights who wrote in English that included colourful and impressive pictures of Girish Karnad, Manjula Padmanabhan, B.V. Karanth and K.V.Subbanna.
The picture depicting the life of Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon and fine brochures of RSC, Broadway and Globe Theatres provided informative details about the growth of theatre and the Bard’s contribution to drama.
The exhibition had unique quotes here and there with impressive water co-lour portraits of English poets from Chaucer to Auden and portraits of Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth and were especially worth seeing.
The expo had a section devoted to over 50 pictures depicting a semiotic interpretation of English literature from 1485 to 2010.
Many visitors were busy taking pictures of rare exhibits and most young visitors wrote down the list of abbreviations used in electronic messaging format. The exhibition also had a thermocol model of Elizabethan Theatre made by PU students.
The exhibition which was part of the Shakespeare Festival on Feb. 25 and 26 for the first time brought for Mysore an extraordinarily visual depiction of Shakespeare’s literary art in particular and world drama in general.
The visitors could write a line about why they admired the plays of the bard and join the competition that offered Rs. 1,000 prize to one lucky visitor.
The exhibition was conceived and directed by Prof. Balajee of the Functional English Dept. with support from Rev. Fr. Leslie Moras, Principal and technical support from Prof. Babu of the Malayalam Dept. — OSR
source: http://www.StarofMysore.com / Feature Articles / March 03rd, 2012