The 7th ‘Show Your Talents’ English drama contest sponsored by School of Foreign Languages was started in October 2014, participated by the teams representing the schools or departments of the university as well as by those grouped by students of the same interest themselves, six of them advancing to the final. The final round was held in the concert hall of the Students Center at Jiulonghu Campus on the evening of December 2. Though theming Shakespeare like before, the 7th English drama contest, supported by the President’s Cultural Funds, saw fresh enrichment in various aspects.
Staged first in the final was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, a traditional Shakespearean drama, by the sophomore team of English majors. Practice makes perfect. Their well-rehearsed performance did get across the footlights.
It was followed by “Pride and Prejudice” played by the freshman team of English majors. As it was their first experience, they appeared to be excited. The student who acted Mr. Bingley performed with proper gentleness, and the one who acted Darcy gave a full display of the latter’s arrogant manner and inner enthusiasm.
After that came a play adapted from “A Chinese Odyssey”, Stephen Chow’s comedy, featuring the role-play of a girl student as male character. Tang Monk she played indubitably became the very highlight of the play or even the contest, her humorous song Only You making the audience burst into laughter and applause throughout the play. In addition to their appealing performance, much attention had apparently been paid to the costumes for certain creative changes to match the time/space-crossing characters.
Then, the exotic modern version of “Much Ado About Nothing” prompted another exciting surprise among the audience. The next one, “The Merchant of Venice”, was performed by a mix group with teammates from different schools, departments or majors, sparkling with wits stemming from different thinking modes. And the last performance, based on a traditional Chinese opera “Injustice to Dou E”, broke the original sad tone by humourizing it, triggering rounds of spontaneous applause.
When the stage acting came to the end, Prof. Zhu Litian made favorable comments on the performances, and offered her suggestion that “more attention should be paid to acting coherence, pronunciation and oral fluency, facial expression, body language, and what’s more, full use of basic stage effect”.
Awards were presented at the conclusion of the contest. He Yixi won the title of Best Actor, Yu Hanlin that of Best Actress, He Yixi Most Popular Actor, and Kuang Hanyue Most Popular Actress. The Best Stage Effect award went to the team of “Injustice to Dou E”. Top award of the contest went to “Much Ado About Nothing”, followed by the runner-up, “A Chinese Odyssey”, and the third-place winners, “The Merchant of Venice”, “Injustice to Dou E” and “Pride and Prejudice”.
