Theater and management studies might not have much in common on the face of it, but the students of Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad have developed a strong bond with both. What started out as one of show by the students in 1999 has now, become the institutes annual theatrical event happening annually for over a decade.

Students involved in organising the event feel that the months that go in putting up the three-day long festival in December every year gives them greater learning of management and communication than any other class or internship.

Though annual business school competitions and cultural festivals happen in most b-schools, MICA has been able to create a niche by focusing on performing arts, theater being the most explored. Be it there theater festival Sankalp or the brand communication festival, MICANVAS, the city of Ahmedabad awaits the performances and programmes put up by the students.

Sankalp, which will be hosted in December, is an event put together completely by the students. The event has plays produced by team Sankalp, staged for the public for three consecutive days. “Student teams handle sponsorship, production, set designs, media and logistics during this event. Besides contributing our little bit in trying to restore the dying art of theatre, putting forth the whole event together is an on the job training for us where we learn various skills of resource and people management,” says Surabji Suri, from the organising committee of Sankalp.

In previous years, team Sankalp had staged plays such as Girish Karnad’s ‘Tuglaq’, ‘Hayavadana’, ‘Sacrifice’, Vijay Tendulkar’s ‘Encounter in Umbugland’, Dharmavir Bharti’s ‘Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda’ and Woody Allen’s ‘Death.’

Besides the three-day long theater festival, team Sankalp also contributes to society with its theatrical skills. The team, in their initiative called ‘Rangmanch’, has been performing street plays in villages, municipal schools and community places in and around Ahmedabad spreading the message of personal hygiene, save the girl child or importance of education.

Sankalps founders – Karthik Kumar and Sunil Vishnu K who launched the programme in 2000, now run a theatre company Evam. The theatre group is based in Chennai and stages plays in various cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and even Colombo. Other Sankalp alumni come back to participate in the event every year. Formar Sankalp director, Spandan Mishras work The Diary which was first staged in Sankalp 2009, has gone on to win accolades at the Kala Ghoda Festival, Mumbai.

This year Sankalp is going bigger. From a theater festival alone, this year onwards, there will be over 15 different events spread over three days for students of MICA and other institutes. The festival will explore story-telling in all its forms one-act plays, photography, comic strip creation documentary film making, radio plays, street plays, shadow theatre and more, says Surabhi.

The brand communication festival of MICA, also planned and executed by the students themselves, MICANVAS has a strong element of performing arts in the various events during the three-day event. Being organised from October 28 to October 31, students get to do both; apply the management skills taught in class and learn beyond classroom concepts like people management.

“The one thing that we try to keep in mind while planning MICANVAS is that like other institutes, the annual festival of MICA should not forget the festivities. While MICANVAS’s flagship event, Mindspeak, has eminent people from the media fraternity coming and sharing their experiences with the participating students, there are many other fun events that test participants on the communication and analytical skills, says Kartikeya Malhotra, from the organising committee of MICANVAS.

Abhinav Krishna, also from the organising committee of MICANVAS shares, “keeping the connection with the corporate world, one of our competitions is around the communication and marketing problems faced by them. There are competitions like ‘Roti Kapda aur Mobile’ for a mobile company and few other corporate sponsored events for whom a market research is undertaken to identify problems and a competition is announced to find the best possible solution.

There are also competitions like Half time a sport marketing event, Metropia – where teams create their own super hero and market them, Random Play – the music marketing competition and Digi 3.0+ – digital media marketing that sounds fun but has its genesis in what the corporate world is offering and demanding.”

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