I wrote POISON, a year ago. The birth of that script happened late at night, I sat down in a vague feeling of inspiration to pen it between 12 am and 2 am.
When I originally wrote the script, the play was intended to be my test bed. I had only a few hours before seen a new stage… A new space that was so inspiring that I wanted to have my play performed there. A year later, the space seems very far away but the play is now very close to my heart.
When I first had a read of the play with my friends, I wasn’t too thrilled by the response. There was promise, people enjoyed it but it wasnt the rib tickling comedy that has people rolling on the floors. That was Lesson 1: Reading a play is very different than performing a play.
When you are telling and explaining a story to someone the rules of engagement are different (I put a pun in there :D ). When you are performing it there is larger set of sense organs that are engaged, and with that the way you handle them is what separates a good from the great.
I was watching Charlie Chaplin recently and was in absolute awe of him. Here is a man saying so much by saying nothing. I guess there is a life lesson hidden there somewhere… I digress… I realized that its not just what is said that is important and when creating something for multiple senses its extremely important to keep all of them in mind at all times. You simply cant work on something thats visually brilliant and expect to put good words in it later. The vice versa is a no-no too. Then again these are not hard set rules, they are just the rules I think works.
My original intent with POISON was to see what another director would do with the play. It was written with the intent of letting go of my writings. I have this problem of holding on to my writings for too long. I tend to be very anal about how the writing is interpreted and I was looking for a way to break away from this. POISON was the way, I told myself that I will not interfere with the director once the play is picked up for performance. This was one of the reasons the play was made short.
While the interest in the play initially started out small, there were a few believers who kept pushing me to direct it myself. I was clear then that I wouldnt do it. the reason was it was the start of a year of hiatus from the stage… Something I am not too proud off but it did teach me a lot of life lessons.
Months later and the believers where all there still. My teacher, Ratan Takore Grant was the most influential of them all; He kept reminding me about this abandoned project. He was the one who taught me one of the biggest lessons of life –
Never start something you cant finish, and never quit on something you have started
– Ratan Takore Grant
That single line has had tremendous influence in my life, the latest of which was POISON.
After a series of odd but (now) seemingly charming situations I was once again presented the idea of performing the play. This time though, I wanted to do it. But this time was different, I felt like Rocky. No not in the heavy weight way but rather in the belief of an unique opportunity. All I wanted to do was to grab it and make it work…
Ps: This is a part one of a three part series about my first major play(writing/direction)