“The Third Wave” experiment - with Mark Hancock
Greetings from Wings Cultural Society !
One of the challenging, but imperative aspects of acting includes living the character
and becoming one with it. This involves being able to get into another person’s
shoes and understanding their perspective. What could be better than meeting this
character that the actor tries so hard to adopt? What could be better than to understand
the character and their story from the character himself? Wings Cultural Society
had an opportunity to enjoy this ecstatic moment by meeting and interacting with
Mark Hancock, who was a part of the “The Third Wave” experiment, on which the society’s
play “The Wave” is based. Mr. Hancock, here on a tour with a group, was truly elated
to discover that Wings Cultural Society understood the relevance of the play and
has continued to perform it at various platforms. Eager to meet both the previous
and the current cast & crew, he contacted the play’s director, Tarique Hameed, requesting
for the same.
11th January 2018, was a once in a lifetime experience for the Society,
involving fruitful and enriching discussions with Mark Hancock. It enabled us to
comprehend the intensity of the play that we were staging in different parts of
the country and the overwhelming emotions attached to it. The meeting involved an
informal question-answer session, followed by discussions over a wide variety of
issues related to the play. Mark was keen to hear our experiences and struggles
as a team in performing “The Wave”, including how and why each one of us related
to the play. In turn, he narrated his own personal experiences and provided a background
of many of the real-life characters in this play. Not only this, he shared how the
experiment changed him as a human being and encouraged him to work for the welfare
of the society. He expressed his appreciation for our Society’s endeavour to perform
this play and make the masses realize how important it is to question one’s actions
and not be simply moved by a leader. Conversing with Mark Hancock and understanding
the emotional turmoil of those 8-9 days of experiment, Wings Cultural Society, is
more motivated than ever, to take this play further to a larger audience. We are
grateful to Mr. Hancock for gracing us with his presence, allowing us to delve deeper
in this play, and opening new horizons.