Aesop final performance

It has usually been my usual practice, on the last night of any production, to sit as a member of the audience; on the previous night or nights, I would normally be somewhere at the back, watching and monitoring, but also able to move around (and, very occasionally, to leave, temporarily.)  But tonight I decided to remain backstage with the cast.  They were likely to be pretty exuberant and excitable, but my presence was only partly because I wanted to be able to keep the behaviour under control.  Val had been backstage on the third night, after leaving them under the management of three of the teachers for the second night at GN1, and had shown me some of the photos taken backstage.  To be quite honest, I wanted to have some of that excitement and fun for myself.  And it would allow Val to watch, and report back to me afterwards.

First I gave my usual introduction, giving out housekeeping rules, chiefly about the use , or rather non-use, of phones, but then going on to explain why I had chosen to do without microphones.  Was I a technophobe?  A bit.  Was it the technical aapects, the problems of providing and controlling forty microphones, alongside the likelihood of them going wrong, one way or another?  A bit more.  But mostly, as I explained, because theatre was first cousin to storytelling, the oldest art form of all (so far as we could establish), and that throughout the ages theatre had managed to tell stories without such unreliable aids.  I had been invited to CMS to show that Drama and Theatre could still work with such a back to basics approach.  After which, I disappeared backstage.

It did mean that I am unable to comment on the performance itself, though by all accounts it was the best they had done it.  Which is far from usual for a last night; the unexpected benefit of being underrehearsed, I suppose.  One of the funniest things, from my point of view, was that several of them came backstage and breathlessly asked me how it had gone.

I very much enjoyed being a part of things backstage, and witnessing for myself the range of approaches, the brief  moments of panic, the fun.  (Far from being a restraining influence, if anything I was a major part of the problem.)  I had heard how quietly efficient Araddhya was, but it was great to witness that for myself.  I also had the authority to allow the backstage helpers to go out front to witness some of the show for themselves.  Though they had not really proved as useful as we had hoped, they had been given something of a thankless task, so I had no problem about allowing them the opportunity to see a little of the finished product.  Though when one of them breathlessly returned with phone footage of a scene or two – after everything I had said about putting phones away! – I did have to pretend to be a little cross.

There had been a plan to have a joint singalong of the final song with the audience, with the words projected onto the big screens, but there was a complete misunderstanding as to when this might happen – a very good example of the chaos caused by never having rehearsed or even properly planned such a thing – so that had to be scrapped.  Geeta gave the concluding address once again – she had graciously made time to come for the final night as well as the first (though she had also been signing documents throughout the first act, which rather dampened the audience reaction.)  But she also was good enough to feed me, once again, the line about me returning to CMS, which allowed me the chance to repeat my money joke (after first turning to get a reaction from the cast) which received the expected  audience response.

And then it was done.  The cast were allowed a brief few minutes of jumping around to music, and though I was very much invited to join in, I was too busy speaking to various people, fielding compliments, etc.  (Though I was to discover later that Val was in the middle of the mix, leaping with the best of them.)  It did take a long time for them finally to be ushered from the building, and then even longer to get them onto their bus.  (And, as we discovered afterwards, later still for that bus to make its way through the mayhem of Friday night traffic; the teachers had to phone for the police to come and clear the way, so they could get home.)

We too (Aparna and Usha were also with us, having made the journey especially from Dhangadhi) were a long time getting home; it was only Himanshu’s ingenuity and local knowledge that got us home.  I was mildly deflated, understandably so I suppose, but there was no doubting the fact that it had been a great success.  Which was, of course, pleasing.