My experience being the director of the SCIA Culture Show!

By: Tamanna Sood ‘24

On March 24th, my friend Amirta Srinivas and I co-directed and hosted the annual SCIA culture show at Bovard Auditorium.  SCIA’s annual culture show highlights South Asian talent on campus and gives them a platform to showcase South Asian dance forms and music styles. As a member of the SCIA E-board, I was involved in marketing the show last year. Despite that, I had no idea what planning and managing the show entailed. Due to the show’s increasing popularity and the expansion of South Asian talent on campus this year, I stepped as co-director to help take on a more ambitious event.

A month and a half ago, we started show prep by electing a student director. SCIA sent out an application form through our Instagram inviting  student directors to sign on. I got lucky that the committee chose a co-director I’d already been friends with for years, so we were able to immediately jump into sharing ideas.

Amirta and I, alongside the presidents of the organization, met weekly to discuss the concept of the show, the performers, and all the paperwork that needed to be done to reserve the auditorium. We solicited talent to join by posting more applications through our Instagram feed, excited to connect with a broad range of student dancers and singers. The show is designed to be interactive and allow for people of all backgrounds and experiences to join together on stage which means that there’s at least one dance that anyone can join, even if they’re a total beginner. We finalized our dancers and performers by the first week of March leaving us only two weeks to finalize our concept and work out the production logistics.  While Amita worked on the evening’s script, I became the communications director coordinating with Bovard and the performers.

We settled on the concept, “A Trip Through India,” and we assigned each performance slot a state to represent. This felt intuitive as many Indian dance forms originate from certain states and are innately tied to regions. In total we had six performances which included a singing medley and five dance performances that included USC Adaa (USC’s premier Kathak team), Trojan Bhangra (USC’s Bhangra team), and USC Zeher (USC’S competitive DDN Bollywood dance team). 

 While the Culture Showcase was impressive on its own, I’m increasingly proud after witnessing the unique hurdles we faced this year. We had to significantly move up the show due to Bovard’s availability, leaving us short on time while also being short on money. Due to USG’s funding issues this past year, our funding proposal was rejected. This was our first year having to navigate producing the show without USG funds. 

We learned that USG ran out of funds in early February of this year which caused a wide swath of organizations to be denied funding despite USG’s previous promises. This denial was extra surprising considering the good relationship SCIA has with USG and their previous record of funding our events. Although budgeting and fundraising became more complicated without the USG support, the team managed to pull together the resources that were available to create an incredible show. 

Once the whirlwind and anxiety was over, I was grateful that I stepped up to direct the show because it allowed me to put on an event that highlighted my culture, and despite the obstacles, the show was amazing. I’ve also increased my knowledge of stage managing, hosting, budgeting, organizing, delegating, and managing my time. Despite my exhaustion now, I can’t wait to help out again next year!

Want more from Trojans 360?

Visit Trojans 360 on Facebook & Twitter to stay up to date with more student content! You can also Ask A Trojan an anonymous question, and we’ll try to answer it in a future post. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram!

Trojans 360 is USC’s official student-run blog. Content created by students, for students.