I woke up on Saturday feeling like I was going to get sick. We were hours away from our presentation and so much work was still pending. For some reason I felt lucky… not just lucky ‘very lucky’. I had this feeling that nothing can go wrong… Well I was wrong and right!

There couldn’t have been a worser start… First there was rain, then a change in the positions of the entrances, then a spell of dry weather which confused us(on keeping the show outdoors or indoors), then a nice shower to confirm it will be indoors and just a few seconds after the start the power went out!

Ironically each of the above actually helped us in a way or two. What finally mattered was that the show resumed after a quick break to get lights. We now had a show in a room full of candles giving the whole evening a beautiful romantic glow.

Before the start of the show I was a nervous wreak before the start of the show… Having around 30 ppl who know you in the audience does not help! The power failure did help :P. The presentation was now on the way… Shailesh and Mahesh were on stage and they were just brilliant from the word go… Jags and Yash were on stage and I sat nervously waiting for my cue and trying to catch any sound of laughter, the first play was written by me and was a comedy…

2 min into the play I sat down dejected, I had not heard a single sound of laughter. I remember looking at Deepthi, one of my cast members who was about to go on stage and saying “please save the play.” There was a lot of verbal comedy at the start but her entry marked the start of a phase of physical humor which had to hit home. Then there was a distinct sound of laughter… the sound was music to my ears and I for the first time was relieved. The Physical humor did the magic after that, there were regular bursts of laughter and then a little cameo by me at the end(Lot of ppl hv complained to me that I did not do this properly :( )

After the show I was informed that the audience actually got most of the jokes but the laughter was overshadowed by the heavy rain outside the window :)

The second play had me playing a friend in need. My critics said it was an average performance. I looked at the video and personally was not satisfied with my performance too :( I clearly need a lot of fine tuning. The play was on of the smaller ones and it was over in like a min and half :P Got to say was very impressed with how Neerja held her heavy accent as the doc in that one.

I got to watch very little of the show… Mostly when I was on stage actually. Back stage had really bad acoustics(like it matters :P ), sometimes we were hardly 10 feet away from the actors but could not hear a word. After the second play I got a lot of rest and time to get into character for the last play. ‘2200’ written by Shailesh was next with Aparna and Lalitha, Mahesh was to make an appearance in the play and well written (and well implied :P ) comedy was a hit… The audience was laughing from the start to the end… The presentation was going very well so far, nothing better to make you nervous than to realize that you can spoil the entire show by forgetting what to say when everyone else remembered :P

The next play was the ‘Husband and Wife Argument’, This was a very serious play about a husband telling his wife he is about to leave her… Neerja had written it and played the wife. Ayush played the Husband and Lalitha had directed it. The audience was laughing their heads out in parts of the play, I was later told that the play was mostly improvised and that the parts that looked funny was actually very relateable to every one. People were basically laughing coz they thought ‘damn, I do the same things when I am in a fight’!

It was not time for the finale… I can safely say that there were times before that day I felt like withdrawing my play because I felt that the audience would just not get it… It was only the determination I saw in the cast and the direction of Venky that I walked in thinking ‘There is atleast one person in this audience who will get what I am trying to say, This is for that person’… Dialog after dialog we just kept on going, hitting the punch lines when it had to be hit. And in few min it was all over, When Yash and I walked off stage I went straight for Lalitha to give her a hug and tell her thanks, she was the other cast member of the play. Shailesh and Mahesh were giving the last dialouges of the play and then in one final outburst there were claps.

The hugs where going all around and we felt great about it. One by one we walked up for the curtain call and thats when finally the realization dawned on me, the show was a hit! Suddenly, nothing else matters… Just the fact that the audience loved it was enough for us.

After the show around 4-5 people came up to me and complimented my writing. A friend of mine also discussed The Photgrapher with me during dinner and hearing the words she chose to speak I knew the message went across loud and clear. In all honesty this was far more important to me than my acting(which got a little compliments too), which is very poor compared to the other brilliant actors on stage that day.

It was great to have so many friends in the audience… Guys thank you all for coming you have no idea what this meant to me :)

Like they say ‘Alls Well that Ends Well’. I remember telling Swetha a couple of days before the show ‘This is going to be either a big hit or a big flop, nothing in between’… Im so happy it was the former.

PS: I have a few videos of the show but the sound is not very perfect so I will wait for the others with video cameras that day, before I put the videos online… Earliest by Thursday :)

You can read the plays here