Fairytales in Foreign Language Competition was held at the Faculty of History

On 25 March ASU Campus M was crowded with fairytale characters. The reason for that was obvious: Faculty of History was holding its traditional competition, where students were supposed to present fairytales in foreign languages.

In 2016 there were 8 teams participating in the competition, so it was a real fairytale marathon. The audience watched not only famous children tales, but also original performances. Dramatized sketches were demonstrated in English and German.

The students worked very hard to show their language skills, as well as their ability to act, so it was hard for judges to decide who had been the best. At last, they made a decision to give the 1st place to the performance called “Tarzan in Wonderland, 18+”, the 2nd place to “Welcome to the Kingdom” and the 3rd place to “Snow White”.

Students’ individual achievements were not left unnoticed. Thus, the best actress prize went to Victoria Gaskova, who acted as Fiona.

Kirill Keda, performer of Mad Hatter part:

“I’ve only received positive emotions from the competition! Where else could I jump onto the table in front of the lecturers without making them angry? All teams were very creative and humorous in making their performances. It was fun!”

Pavel Kornienko, performer of Tarzan part:

“We started preparing for the competition one month prior to it. We were not able to come up with an idea for the tale, it was such an agony. We were even thinking about showing a tale about the exchange rate of rouble that his grandparents (like Kolobok in a popular Russian tale). In the end we decided to choose the roles for every one of us and come up with the idea considering them. It was just the time when spring came, and I think it was one of the reasons why I performed as a half-naked man with an extravagant hairstyle. It was easy and hard at the same time to write the scenario: we were inventing the jokes easily, but it was hard to unravel the plot. At last we decided to take a risk and show the audience the 18+ fairytale, but without any platitude. In the process of preparation we had a lot of fun. And, of course, we would not do so well if it weren’t for our supervisor and lecturer Elena S. Katunina.”

The highlight of the program were performances prepared by ASU Chinese students, who were out of the competition. They showed “Winnie-the-Pooh” and “Magic Ring” in Russian, as they are only at their first year in the university. The students did not just learn by heart and reproduce the texts of their tales, but also acted professionally. The managed to show a good level of the Russian language and gave a lot of positive emotions to the audience. It’s safe to say that the competition turned out to be perfect.