The Dramatic Arts : From the Shadows of the Stage

I may not have stressed on this earlier what with the influx of drama reviews I have written recently, but I love the dramatic arts. It is one of my favorite forms of entertainment. The reason I love stage plays is because, what you see is literally what you get, each and every time. It is not a perfect recording which can broadcast repeatedly. If everyone is not in their A game all the time, even a good play will falter.

Since I love them so much, any chance I get to participate in them is something of a miracle to me. I was lucky enough to have a small role in the drama Samarpanam, written by Chandramohan and produced by JB Creations. That small role gave me a chance to share the stage, albeit for a few seconds, with some of the best in the field today.

Recently, I got another chance to participate in the staging of a play. More specifically, I got the chance to take on the role of music director, a glorified music player in my case, in one of the showings of Eendra Pozudhil, the latest drama from Mother Creations. It truly was a one of a kind experience.

The show happened at Kamakshi Kalyanamandapam in Chrompet, and I was asked to take on the post, because my dad, who is the actual music director, was unavailable. So Chandramohan, the director, asked me to take my dad’s place and play music.

I am going to be totally frank here; this play does not have simple tracks which can be switched on and off. The music is crucial in setting the emotion for a lot of scenes and, even after watching my father work on the play, I had a really tough time.

First off, here are a few definitions which I will explain, before I go ahead and talk in technical jargon. The pit is a small space in front of the stage which is hidden from the audience. This is where the music director, the musicians if any, the person operating the lights and the audio manager of the entire hall sit. I used a laptop to play the tracks, which were played through Acid Pro, a music editing software. The audio is output through a mixer connected to a laptop. A mixer is used to control the volume and equalizer settings of the sound.

The person operating the lights often uses a tool similar to the mixer, called a Pulsar, which has sliders to control the intensities of lights mounted on top of the stage in strategic locations. Now that the technical jargon as been explained, ill just get to the part where the play starts.

Five minutes before the start of the play three bells are rung and that is the cue for all the lights in the auditorium to be turned off and every technician and actor to get in their places.

I was pretty confident before the start of the play. That is until the second bell rang. My dad had wished me luck over the phone, and most of the troupe members had also wished me luck. Surprisingly enough, one of the members of the audience realized that this was my first time, and he wished me luck too.

It was when the second bell rang, that the jitters truly started to set in and, man-o-man was I nervous. Looking, and observing the technicians working during the play, is really something else. Their hands fly across the sliders with practiced ease, the lighting operator switching between wide lights and spot lights, and the music director editing the tracks on the spot and controlling the levels in the mixer. You really have to see it to believe it, but they make it seem too easy.

Sitting there, my hands on the mixer and laptop, I was just too nervous, and it was the same nervousness which remained till the end of the show. Trust me when I tell you, it is not at all easy. For the first few minutes, it was almost as if my hands were made of lead. I could hardly move or control them.

But as time went on, I started to get into the grove of getting alternate tracks ready on different laptops, and making sure to control the volume, when one was playing and I was editing on the other laptop. The lighting director for this show was “Cheta” Ravi, a veteran of the field with more than forty years experience, and he was a great help to me, letting me know when I had to bring down the volume in crucial scenes. Another person who was a huge support was the director, Chandramohan, who joined me in the pit, making sure I didn’t make any glaring mistakes.

People in the drama industry say that, more than the money they earn it is the applause and the respect that they get, which matters to them. Only after that show did I understand the true meaning of that statement. Hearing the audience applaud is a nothing short of amazing. But the greatest feeling was when the audience member who had wished me luck, came forward and shook my hand saying I did a marvelous job.

As an audience member, you get to walk out after the show s over, much like a movie. But, after the show there are a lot of things which need to be packed up. The sets need to be taken down. The speakers and mixers need to be disconnected. The lights must be packed up, but as I was doing all these things, all I could think of was the people who had congratulated me on my job, and the amount of applause the play received. I was proud that I had, in some way shape or form, contributed to the successful show.

This was truly a once in a lifetime experience. I got to feel what it was like to have a whole production hinging on my fingers, literally. It was not a great feeling. I was tense and every moment I was filled with dread, because I was afraid of doing something wrong. But it is an experience which I will cherish for all my life. And who knows, maybe I will do it again sometime.

Until next time:

Peace!!!