AUD’S Theatre Society Club receives first place in the People’s Choice Awards in Short + Sweet Dubai
The Theatre Society Club in the American University in Dubai has received first place in The People’s Choice category in the Short + Sweet Festival last Saturday, February 6th for their play “Adaptation”.
Club member Sameh Abdelrazik, wrote the script for the play, and Zeinab Jalal the club president along with Peter Baker the vice president directed it.
The Club practiced their play for more than 3 months and the news came quite surprising to them. “I literally jumped when I knew” said Rasheed Hattab, an actor in the play. “It was the first time on stage for a lot of us, and to win? I was definitely not expecting that,” added Rasheed.
“We were kind of nervous because some of the people participating were very professional” said Rohan Healy, an actor in the play. “People laughed when we were acting, we actually had full seats watching our play,” said Rasheed.
The reason behind the club joining the famous Short + Sweet festival was their Club Advisor, Professor Tabitha Kenlon. “Ever Since the club started it’s something that she wanted to do for a while,” said Rohan.
Zeinab Jalal the creator of this club and the president, told us a bit about the history of this club and how it came together:
“I’m a theatre practitioner and I’ve been practicing theatre for almost 6 years now, and I did IB theatre arts, High Level and at that time I was exposed to a lot of types of theatre such as physical theatre.”
She added: “I spoke to Rashad, the old student services guy and I said, look I’m really interested in theatre and I don’t see anything in University of that sort, so I want to create a club and he said you need an adviser and there is one for you she’s new and she’s into this stuff so he gave me professor Tabitha’s contact information.”
As for their future plans she said that the club will be presenting a play that she has directed back in 2013: “I went to Paris Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi and I directed a play there as well in 2013, we’re planning to do this physical theatre piece over here too for TedEX AUD.”
“We try to meet at least once a week, every opportunity we get we will try to perform and it will always be something original,” said Rohan.
The AUD theatre society club is very active and eager to have new members joining, make sure you email theatre@clubs.aud.edu to join them!
