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Second edition of Midas trophy to be held at Pune’s Bharat Natya Mandir on December 16
This trophy is awarded to the best performance of a play translated, adapted or written in English or foreign languages
The Midas trophy that began in 2017, is in its second year and will create a platform for foreign language students and theatre lovers to come together. Tejal Creations in association with Rian.io organises Midas trophy to encourage the use of English and Foreign languages one has learnt painstakingly. Theatre is used as a medium to express the translator, writer, actor, director within.
This trophy has caught the foreign language learners interest, from having only three entries in the first year in 2017, to 10 entries this year. The competition will be held at Bharat Natya Mandir on December 16.
“Language acquisition is rapidly becoming a major point of interest for students who have become aware of the potential careers that they can target with more than one foreign language in their arsenal. And over the years, Pune has always had large numbers of young people learning languages in curricular and extra-curricular settings,” said Lalita Marathe, a German translator and trainer who floated this idea in 2017.
“I started this competition out of love for languages and theatre, and I wish to give the foreign language students and theatre lovers a platform, a forum to showcase their skills. It creates a huge opportunity for all participants to express the author, translator, director and actor within and master the language through the effective tool of theatre, which compliments classroom education by inculcating confidence and attention to good phonetics, by enhancing presentation skills, by getting exposure to foreign language literature and culture,” she added.
The plays performed will be in foreign languages like German, French, Portuguese and English where the plays will be judged on two criteria viz. theatre and language, where experts from each language industry will be judging the performances.
This trophy is awarded to the best performance of a play translated, adapted or written in English or foreign languages. Once a year, teams of students become engrossed in choosing, translating, and performing a play. Of course, they do so under the guidance of their language teachers, and teams participate under the banner of their educational institutions or independent teams.
The M B theatre from Kolhapur is very excited to present their play for the first time in Pune. “Our play is called ‘the director’ and is about the conflict regarding their individual views about life. The play was originally written in Hindi by Priyam Jani and MB theatre from Kolhapur is presenting it in English,” said Mandar Bhanage, director and actor of the play.
Last year a German play won the trophy, the play was based on a short story by Leonard Thomas‘ Der K lari net te spiel er’ written for the stage by Uddhav Godbole presented by Konnexion Linguistique. “I am a technical translator and an engineer by profession. As a translator, this one act play competition gave us an opportunity to go beyond translations and look at experimenting with the language learnt. It was thrilling to win an award for our efforts,” said Uddhav Godbole.
This year too they have two plays in German. The first drama is Die A. I. Sklaven. ( slaves of Artificial Intelligence). The human race is day by day becoming dependent on computer technology. The day is not far when we may become slaves of the computing machines. This is the theme of this drama. In this drama, a young anthropologist has to train a Neolithic man into a modern techno-savvy human being.
