A Long Way To The Top: On Ashoka’s School of Rock and the Magic of Adaptation

There’s a tangible buzz around campus on the evening of April 10 — although it’s not your average Thursday night at Ashoka. It is the opening night of School of Rock, an adaptation of the 2003 Richard Linklater film, a comedy starring Jack Black as Dewey Finn, a struggling musician who poses as a substitute teacher to win the Battle of the Bands. 

At Black Box Theatre, however, Dewey was reborn as Debu, played by Teaching Fellow Neel Vaidya (ASP’24), who also co-wrote the script along with Naman Agarwal (UG’26), Samhitha Sankaranarayanan (ASP’25), and Arnav Singh (UG'24). Sayona Chachra Pahwa (ASP’25) and Dhritvan Alva (ASP’25) were co-directors, with Alva also serving as music director.

The audience was greeted with an elaborate setting — a soft board on wheels crowded with bills and posters and a drum set with No Vacancy, the band Debu is unceremoniously expelled from, painted in quirky lettering. As the setting changed into a classroom, however, the ‘school’ of rock began to take shape. Elements like colourful student progress sheets, a whiteboard and a detailed chart titled "History of Rock" were brought on stage as additions to Debu’s unconventional teaching methods. The production also involved elaborate set and prop movement, from desks being moved back and forth or the school bus formation on the floor of the stage, with a handmade steering wheel at the forefront. 

For Vaidya and Alva, who are in the band Room 1029 together, their shared love of the film was the reason behind their enduring love of music. “We watched the movie at very impressionable ages — it is the reason we love rock so much, because rock has given us music, and music gave us each other,” adds Alva.

The idea for the adaptation came to the two of them after a "particularly disastrous show" they had a few months ago. Vaidya and Alva realised that what they loved most about the movie was that it made them jealous of those who got to be a part of its making. The two ultimately wanted to preserve the magic of the original by putting up a play that honoured a kind of recreation. But this was a recreation that did not mean a remake of the film, but a remake of the creation of the film itself. 

Just as the cast of the original movie were musically inclined young adults with no prior acting experience, so was Ashoka’s cast. Arin Prabhat (ASP'25), who played the guitarist Jai, is a drummer in real life and has never acted before. Over the two months, Prabhat learned to act and play guitar. Delzeen Singpurwalla (ASP'25) plays the keyboard, but School of Rock was her first time playing with a band on stage. 

Photo Courtesy: Caperture

A play as ambitious as School of Rock involved a lot of moving parts — movement that would not have been possible had it not been for the backstage support of Vistaar, the music society. Donned in white shirts and colourful ties, the crew's timely interventions and familiarity with complex musical equipment helped put the show together seamlessly.

Ironically, some of the most creative moments came from logistical limitations. The play’s homage to the quintessential makeover sequence centred Faizal, the band stylist played by Ayaan Shariq (ASP'25), who also did costumes for the production. Shariq moved rapidly across the stage, giving each character a “glow up”, the highlight of which was, without a doubt, the scene where Debu’s pants are snipped, taking the form of shorts. This long sequence, interestingly enough, actually came into being in order to take the audience’s attention away from the time that was being taken for instrumental set-up. 

Pahwa recalls stage manager Aditya Padinjat (ASP’25) telling the crew that since the drum kit could not be moved forward, the audience had to be moved to the front instead. The atmosphere of the final scene was that of a packed concert—complete with confetti falling from the ceiling and a disco ball that elicited audible gasps as it dropped.

What also stood out was the lighting choices in the play, as they shifted from blue to yellow, and from lights encompassing all actors to individual spotlights to build tension in an otherwise light-hearted production. The confrontation scene between uptight principal Mandira Ma'am, played by Arooja Bharadwaj (ASP'25) and Preeti, as she attempted to hide a guitar behind her back, was one in which the lights, manned by Purujit Banwasi (ASP'25) and Gopika Sunil (UG'26), took centre stage.

Characterisation was, without a doubt, a defining feature of Ashoka’s School of Rock. Shrshti Santhosh’s (UG’27) portrayal of the neurotic and overconfident Samaya was incredible, and Miranda Cosgrove’s Summer found a commendable successor. But so did Rachit Korrapati’s (UG’26) Kabir, Ishthara Kiran’s (UG ‘28) Prarthna, and Vishwa Aditya Krishnan’s (UG’28) crayon-eating, all over the place Om. The scene in which Patil, played by Yashasvee Singh (ASP’25), and Bijli, played by Bhakti Naik (UG’26) devolve into a "rap battle" over individual music taste (Lorde vs. Seedhe Maut) also comes to mind. As it turns out, it was improvised entirely by the actors — the script merely mentioned the word "fight". 

Aside from regular rehearsals, the team even set aside characterisation time — jokingly dubbed “office hours” as it involved scheduling individual meetings with actors. "We had to rewrite the script entirely, from the ground up, but it made all the difference," says Singh, who believed that this process also helped the writers’ room tether the script with the actors, as opposed to giving them a fixed precedent. 

Vaidya, who has been a Teaching Fellow in the English department for the past two semesters, remarked that his own process of stepping into Debu's character was less about teaching rock and roll or "becoming" Jack Black, and more about learning to love the things that drew him to teaching itself. "I think the way that I interacted with you guys, my actual class, bled into the way that I interacted with my class on stage," remarks Vaidya, whose stage presence was memorable to say the least. It’s not often that a play opens with its main character lying face down, kicking his feet in the air, and ends with a man stage diving at the height of his career.

Just before the entire cast re-entered for their final performance, the ‘school’ embraced each other, conveniently fitting underneath Debu's hand. "And then we ran on, and it felt real. This was our School of Rock," concluded Vaidya. Ultimately, School of Rock is an exhilarating comedy musical that took an admirable amount of heart to pull off, and a successful adaptation that paid worthy homage to its iconic origins — a remaking in every sense of the word.