Scaring myself Silly.

What a fright!

You know that moment where you look down into a deep dark well, or a deep dark tunnel, and you can't see the end. You shout into it, expecting to hear your echo... but somewhere, there's always a little fear, that something apart from your own voice, will shout back.

I blog in the vast anonymity of the internet. Even with facebook pointers, and gtalk status messages pointing to it, I honestly hadn't really expected that anyone would bother to click. So when I put up my facebook status to say.

"Jehan is now thinking that blogging and directing together is very difficult."

I got a bit of a start when I -- got comments back to say keep blogging!

Its hard. Especially now when many things are coming together, and my focus is sucked into making the final production - which is actually a work in progress - given that this is a first draft of a story about Gunadhaya anyway.

Yes yes, you'll get part 4 when I get part 4. We're a few days from run, and i still haven't figured out the last two scenes because i need to go back over the whole play, the story, see how the ideas that have been built into the story coalesce and work the final moments of the play from there. Ultimately - as one of my great mentors would say - no matter what you present in the story, if you get the ending right... people will remember it.

So.. making sure that's right even though the first show is dayafter.

But its difficult.

In the meanwhile, the students have been made to go through a very long and tough exercise, especially since I have been very VERY particular about getting it right. They work through each scene, line by line, moment by moment, and they state what happenned that changes thier objective, state thier objective one small sentence, I do XXXXXXXX to that/him/her/myself and the XXXXXX has to be a playable action, a verb that they can DO on stage. Coming up for the word for "transative verb" in Kannadda was difficult. We settled on "Verb with Purpose" Karaya Kriya. But its innacurate.

However, having gone thourgh act 1 (took 2 days) and now act 2 - the results are strong. They still need to connect thier stated objective with what they do better, but that will come. On my part, it takes a GREAT DEAL OF PATIENCE. But it works. Oh, and them stating thier reasons for objective change, and then thier objective, OUT LOUD, in Kannadda? I'm very happy to say that I've begun to tell what the verbs in kannada sound like. Its interesting, I have to also catch everytime they say "I TELL so and so about such and such." Telling is not allowed, the entier play could be I tell so and so about such and such.

Anyhow, the pressure has been building on them by me. That coupled with a moment, where afteer a long day, I found myself trying to explain to the cast how one actress, with a small supporting part, has successfully articulated every single objective of hers and connected it to what she does on stage, and was encouraging the rest to use it as an example. It was an important point, I wanted the actors to step up to the challenge.

One of the actors, responded to her, "well done, well done" he was trying to crack a joke, and be a bit faecetious...

It was so out of place and out of order, and was symptomatic of an endemic problem i have with them in my rehearsals:

I try to direct them, as professionals.
Expect professional behaviour from them.
Run things with a please and a thank you and a light joke here and there.
I don't try to be thier schoolmaster
I don't try to enforce a regime in the rehearsal room.
The expectation is you are actors, working on a project, training in professionalism, you will do this yourselves.
(Ah - but jehan, they're TRAINING)
So they are students, and sometimes, one has to treat them as such.
- It was once said to me by people here early in the process, at one level, while they are adults, and work towards it, they can behave like children, its part of the indian condition where we're all brought up under dictatorial school masters and not expected to discipline ourselves, but be disciplined by a strong authority figure.

As much as I hope that we can transcend this conditioning of ours from our school days, I have to say. At this point, I very much embraced that philosophy.

.... "I beg your pardon" (wait for translation)
"no nothing sir"
"why say that then? what is the point of it" (wait for translatoin)
"I was just being complimentary, she's like a sister to me I was encouraging her." (I wait for translation)
"Is that what you're here to do?" (Trans)
"No sir" suddenly realising i was serious.
"I'm trying to make a point here that all the actors need to get. I want them to take a moment for this to sink in, how is that going to happen, if they first have to absorb your wise ass moment?" (wil they translate wise ass? no, but I think the message gets across.)
"Sorry sir" muffleed silence, breaths, looks here and there...

Is about when I lost it.

And I mean, LOST IT.
I really went for them, in a way they haven't seen before, and I have rarely every been before. I was PISSED OFF and I RAGED AT THEM LOUD< SCREAMING< ONE POINT AFTER THE NEXT.

The best bit though, was that while I was RAGING at them, A bit of me was standing outside myself, and saying to myself, 'come on J, you've got more in you than that'

and the second, the millli second i thought that...

i found my lungs, voice and general size of tyrant increasing by a factor of ten. I WENT BALLISTIC!!!

Stunned, shocked silence, and not loosing a moment of that opportunity I sunk it every thought i had on what minimum standards was expected. They were listening to every screaming thought I had. Talk about getting through to people.

IN a rage I even explained why i was raging.

Made them all step back, take a moment to breath, told them to drop the emotions they were feeling with the raging, think about what it is they are here - on my stage - in my rehearsal, to learn and do. After 5 minutes, of them standing, silently with themselves, breathing, and haivng made personal decisions about how they were going to approach thigns. Rehearsal started.

I went back to directorial normal - silently exhausted inside.

I got the best 20 mintues of rehearsal i have had with them so far. Ideas flew thick and fast, creativity worked, peopel were trying to MAKE THE STORY WORK.

Then of course, something wasn't working out with one moment, and one of my actors, in an effort to get it right, and failing, lost it, and broke down.

"TEA BREAK PEOPLE LETS GO."

It took every iota of restraint in me to stop myself from going to her and making her feel better. My gut said. Not my place. She needs to sort this one out on her own.

After tea, i couldn't resist, i went to her to talk it through.

"Whats wrong"
"Nothing sir, I'll handle it."
"You ready to work?"
"YES sir."

I had an evening rehearsal which was nothing short of brilliant, and it was a group scene, the worst kind, and everyone was one huge web of performance energy.

Talk about scaring myself silly, I guess I'm the one who learned something new today.