IIM students gear up for a theatre called life

It was a class in IIM-B alright. And, the professor was well in place. But students were not engrossed in an hour-long lecture but rolling in laughter watching their classmates act out a scene in the back benches. The class was theatre management course for PGP fourth semester. 

After three semesters of endless lectures, the students learnt a course that needed no mugging up, one that did not teach perfect answers for imperfect questions and something that prepared them for the theatre of life. The theatre management course was provided as an elective in the final semester of IIM-B for its flagship PGP programme. At least 40 students had opted for the course for which the exams were held last week. The course, like all other electives, carried three credits and was 10-week long with 20 sessions in it. 

GET THOSE SKILLS RIGHT
The class, conducted by accomplished theatre artiste Vijay Nair, is aimed at providing managerial skills through fun and frolic of theatre. It involved routine theatre exercises that helped in team building and developing acting skills, script writing and reading, watching and analyzing plays and finally producing an original one by themselves. 

"Each exercise had a managerial skill to teach us. For instance, there was an exercise where the students had to randomly call out numbers from 1-100. However, no two students should call it out at the same time. In the game, we have to think what 39 others will do as well. Even in corporate life, the synergy between the team members is important. You have to listen to others and process," said Saba Rahman, a student who attended the course. Students were given impromptu scenes to act out, ranging from a scene of a bomb blast to the scene where the character is almost going to miss his flight. The exercises were also varied. In one instance, students were asked to stand in pairs; with one student playing the mirror image of the other. They also watched a play at Ranga Shankara and analyzed it. 

CORPORATE TOUCH
"MBA classes are more about framework. On the other hand, everything was about thinking at the drop of a hat and out of the box. All this is required in a play that is being acted out live. And, you learn to manage crisis on stage," she added. 

Agreed another student Mukesh Kumar: "Corporate life is like that. You have to get work out from colleagues even when you have no formal power over them. The work has to be done with whatever resources we have. No books will teach us those lessons." 

The final exam was to present an original play, 15-minute long, made by students from scratch on romance. "The synchronization from the entire team is required to get a play on stage. There's a lot of creativity involved, with impromptu decisions made, managing the actions on and off stage for 15 minutes. Management and theatre are not two different worlds," said Gurkirat Singh.