It was the day before the show that the feeling truly hit me. I was standing in the center of the stage and suddenly there was this overwhelming feeling of being drowned, it felt like my lungs were searching for that extra bit of air to save my life. In the midst of all the commotion and the running around, for the first time I knew what all of this meant…
Looking back, The Evening Of Theater was the highest effort I had put into an hobby ever in my life. For a month my priorities were bent around the play and at times I pushed myself to physical and mental limits. Couple that with learning complicated lessons of people management and it was possibly one of my proudest achievements. But all of that came at a cost, something I am working very hard at fixing lately.
That day as we checked and double checked, panicked and told others not to panic, I was standing on the stage looking at the empty chairs we were hoping would be filled the next day and a finite piece of my past rushed back to me. This was the same place I had performed for the first time, almost 2 years ago.
Ironically it seemed apt that I was performing at this place. Almost a week before the preform ace I had decided to take a long break from theater. The last month or so had been hard and I was slowly beginning to realize how much I had ignored other parts of my life, I was really looking forward for this break… In ways this added to the magic of it all, there is an amazing bond between the actor and the stage which is hard to explain. Sometimes you just ‘need’ the stage in your performance and it becomes a part of the performance.
As the time drew closer, the nostalgia was building. It felt as though things were falling into place… There was so much happening everywhere that it was hard to keep track of things. The number of people who had volunteered was shockingly large and their dedication was inspirational. That had to be the biggest takeaway from this experience. I truly understood the meaning of the term “selflessness” in those few days.
Once the play started things were happening in fast forward, actors entering and exiting the stage. Laughter and claps echoed at regular intervals… Soon it was time for me to get on stage… Once you are on stage, time just seems to fly… Before you know it the play is over and the curtain call is happening.
When you look back at how much blood and sweat was put into that play, it makes you wonder if you could again be a part of something so amazing. I don’t know if the play was really good or if we could have done better (the audience did like it :P ) but one thing that was definitely true was that it was probably impossible to have put in a better combined effort than what we managed for those special evenings.