Theatre arts students enact ‘To the Stars’

Gachibowli: The Department of Theatre Arts, University of Hyderabad presented a play ‘To the Stars’ for three days recently at Gurbakhsh Singh Hall. The play was enacted by the fourth semester students of the department.

The play was about the family of Andrei Ternovski that lives in exile, in an observatory at the top of a mountain. Dedicated to the study of the stars, Andrei scorns the ‘vain alarms’ of mankind. However, a revolution is brewing down below.

His son Nikolai is fighting among the rebels. Nikolai’s fiancée, Milana, a young colleague of Andrei, has also chosen to join the cause with him. The play revolves around the tension within the family as there has been no news about them and the ongoing revolution.

‘To the Stars’ is written and directed by Jonathan Chatel, a French-Norwegian director. Chatel is also a trained actor and playwright. He also directs documentaries, experimental films and writes essays.

Currently, he is working as a theatre studies professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Some of his best directorial works include ‘Little Eyolf’ in 2012, which won the Public Prize in The Festival Impatience and ‘Andreas’ an adaptation of Strindberg’s ‘The Road to Damas-cus’.

He also founded his own company ELK with playwright Sandrine Le Pors. In his director’s note, Jonathen Chatel said, “The way I see ‘To the Stars’ is like a contemporary parable peopled with apparitions, a confrontation with celestial chaos, an exploration of the paradoxes and the melancholy of the revolutionary drive.”

The actors beautifully incarnated the emotions of trauma, melancholy and survival through their acting skills leaving the audience enthralled. The play was a success due to the efforts of all the crew members.