There was a lot of hustle and bustle around me as I sat in the green room. Any moment now we would be given the signal and we would all have to rush onto the stage. We had waited for this moment for the past few weeks and now that the moment was here, (as one character in the play put it) I had a sudden urge to throw up.
I closed my eyes for a second or two but the nervousness was still there. The last time I was in the wings waiting for my entry into a play was a year and half ago. Back then my performance was in the last 15 minutes of the play and I would only start getting nervous half way thru the play. This time though I was on stage from the very first minute and my stomach somehow didn’t like the idea.
I could hear the audience walking in and taking their seats, we would be on stage any moment now… I stepped out of one the green rooms and walked into the one that we weren’t using. Three huge mirrors in the room were reflecting back my nervousness to me.
And then for a second everything seemed to stop. A thought hit me clear as daylight – “What did it take for me to be here, in this place, at this time?”
I walked back into my memories, step by step. I thought about how I got a chance to act in God which happened thanks to interacting with Danny in Poison. Poison couldn’t have happened without Ratan’s encouragement. I traversed all the way back to how I met Ratan and how Misfit happened to me. The amazing people that inspired me and along the way. Before long I had traced back this moment to a series of choices I made when I was 14.
Suddenly I wasn’t all that much nervous. I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that if all those seemingly impossible events happened to lead me till here, then I shouldn’t really be worried about being in this situation. There was an absolute sense of freedom in the thought.
A minute later we got the call and the play began…
Over the next 30 hours we performed the play four times, the cast were awesome and the audience loved us. I carried the thought with me when ever I needed it and it served me well. Now I have sweet memories to add to the trail of those thoughts…