Our section, III-Rubidium, performed our Classical Ramayana last August 22. Ramayana is a chamber theater presentation of a classic Indian epic which is done by third year students in Philippine Science High School every year in the past years.
In the first few days after our English teacher, Ma’am Bernal, announced this requirement, characters and other roles were assigned to each member of the class. This earlier part of our meetings was a bit chaotic because not everyone immediately agreed to the roles our two directors, Jio and Dianne, gave; but later, most of the class came to accept their roles at heart (a few still thought of their roles as a joke). The scriptwriters took their breaks writing the script for the play while the others made plans about costumes and props.
When the script was finished, we started rehearsing our parts. In most of our practices, we were not complete. Some did not attend just because they needed to cram homework in other subjects or they were just “not in the mood”. Others, including me, who attend practices, didn’t cooperate much. These were the reasons why our director walked out in some practices. These were also reasons why the actual performance became a little “muddy”. Lines were not perfected. The stage was not coordinated. The characters were not concentrating very much. There were so many problems behind the doors to the backstage. People were shouting, panicking, running here and there, changing costumes, and memorizing forgotten lines.
The actual presentation was not really a big success. I can say that we did very satisfactorily but we could have done better when everyone cooperated. But, I still know that we tried to do our best without asking much help from our parents. We bought the materials ourselves for making the backdrop, props, and costumes. We spent many days helping each other in painting the backdrop, fixing the wire nets for the trees/posts, and sewing the costumes without the help of adults. Many of us enjoyed while working even if we became stressed many times. These parts of our meetings were very productive and also promoted cooperation within the class.
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