Do Stars attend premiers on cycle rickshaws?

July 28, 2012

As the train from Delhi arrived nearly four hours late, by the time I returned to my home base of Shantipur, it was assured that I would not be able to rehearse with the cast that day.  As my friends boarded a cycle cart and I plopped onto the back of a motorbike, my host said, “we’ll come in maybe one hour to bring you to the auditorium.” It was about 9 pm on Saturday night, the festival started the next night, I hadn’t rehearsed with my cast for 5 days, I hadn’t even seen the performance space yet and there were seven other plays that would perform before mine.  I sat in my AC room until about midnight when I realized I wasn’t going to see the theatre space that night either. The next day I finally saw the space; an aging auditorium with a deep house and stage, who’s floor creaks and you can peak through a half dozen holes to the dressing room below.  It is dark inside with massive fans on the side walls, double-folding slat-wood doors and quite beautiful, simple artwork on the proscenium arch. Within a short time of entering, a number of children involved in the festival approached me and for the next two days I became a point of amusing fun for them, despite our language differences.  I watched technical rehearsal for that evenings performances (yes, tech rehearsal happens on the day of), then wandered off to find an internet connection, cool down at home and await the unscheduled lunch that would probably arrive.  Occasionally I would hear blasts of music from the megaphone speakers atop the auditorium and once in a while my name blared out over the town.  I was becoming a featured part of the festival.

I found out that my rehearsal would be after the performances that night.  My hosts dressed my up in an embroidered pink kurta with a flowing dhoti.  One of the actors had to tie me into it.  My duty that night was to light the ceremonial lamp to indicate the beginning of the festival. The audience applauded.  Two and a half hours later, after watching literally 80 children performing a range of stories with fanciful costumes, loud music and booming voices, I waited while the exhausted company slowly gathered for our rehearsal.  It was about 11 pm.  We rehearsed for about an hour, with surprising amounts of energy.

The next day, amidst more interactions with the students, waiting for the power to come back on to use the internet and more blaring of my name, I am asked if we can tech my show that night after the performances. That night there are about 3 hours worth of performances, each fascinating in their own way, mostly because of the endless stream of children who take so easily to the stage which is brutally hot.  The audience responds in kind, breaking into applause on a regular basis to indicate their joy in a particularly fetching moment of performance. At maybe 11 or 11:30 pm (I stopped looking at my timepiece), we started our tech, which consisted primarily of a run through and the light board operators fiddling with various choices; some nice, some odd.  I was told several times, “That’s not what the real light will be.” This was a tech of trust.

Although another rehearsal was scheduled for the next day at 11:30, one of the actors was a bit ill, so we had to wait for a while for him to show up.  Then we were delayed because the next group of children arrived and the company needed to do their formal greeting of the children. Our 11:30 rehearsal began about 1 pm (which was supposed to be finished at 12:30) and the actors, despite two days of festival prep and performance, did a bang-up job. Please note, though, we had not yet used nor seen any costumes.  But we had talked about them.

Night came.  I hung out below stage as the children ate dinner (no time or possibility of going home) and, ramped up for the performance, surrounded me in giggly joy.  We taught each other small hand games and they tried to teach me to count in Bengali. Make-up and costuming began in a fury as parents wandered in an out.  Soon the entourage was whisked upstairs, the school bell rang (cue for the audience to sit) and the performance began.  I was left downstairs with a small handful of kids I had never met who were tasked with creating some of the costume pieces for my play.  When the first show ended, the dressing room became a madhouse of my actors doing make-up and costumes, someone dressing me, kids changing, parents wandering in and out, a handful of audience members coming in to take pictures and little cups of tea floating about.  We had about 15 minutes to prep. I finally got to see the costumes.

One of the actors told me, “There are so many people that have come. It is all full. They have come to see you.”

As the school bell rang, we gathered and my show started.  The audience applauded occasionally in joy, and the actors were spot on.  My entrance arrived and just seconds after I stepped on the stage, the audience broke into applause.  My first big action also garnered applause. Despite the brutal heat (costumes were clinging to actors), it was a joyful experience.

At the end of the performance, before I even stepped off the stage, a handful of kids ran up to me shouting, “Beautiful” and hugged me. And that ended my directorial debut in North India.