IIMA students to hone mgmt skills with play at Natarani

The students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) polish their managerial skills by organising a plethora of events and festivals. Their latest endeavour in this direction will take their talents on the stage.

For the first time, students of the premier management institute will be performing a play, titled ‘Badi Buaji…Baap Re Baap’, before the general public. The play, which will be staged on October 2-4 at Natarani, is based on a Bengali play by Badal Sarkar.
Though known for their events and festivals such as Confluence and Chaos as well as workshops organised and managed by the students, the institute now plans to hone their management through organising plays for the public.

The play will be staged by the IIM-Ahmedabad Cultural and Theatrical Society (IIMACTS), which is managed entirely by students of the institute. IIMACTS stages several plays at the institute every year and has also been participating in competitions. Novelist Chetan Bhagat, an alumnus of IIMA, was also a member of IIMACTS and had scripted and directed plays for the group.

“We will be learning various aspects of management, marketing and scheduling, among other things, through the play. We will also put up hoardings, banners, posters and so on, for publicity,” said Abhishek Mundra, student coordinator of IIMACTS.

“We not only wanted to display the talent of the students, but also wanted to present a genre of entertainment different from today’s rush to multiplexes,” he said.

The director of the play, Soumendu Ganguly, said that they had chosen a Hindi play so that they would be able to connect better with the people of the city. “The culture of Ahmedabad is family-oriented. The entire family goes out together for evenings and entertainment. So, we chose a play that is clean comedy, so that the whole family can enjoy it together,” he said.

Around 20 students of IIMA, from both PGP-1 and PGP-2, are involved in the play, which is around two and a half hours long. Around 15 per cent of the revenue generated from the play will be donated to Prayaas, an initiative of students of the institute to provide education to children residing in the slums located nearby.