Played out

I feel a bit ashamed to say that, in my 29 years of existence, I watched my first play today (better late than never). I watched “Chaos Theory” by Rahul De Cunha.  I realised two things as I watched the play. I liked the play; I love performing arts. The very concept of seeing the actors performing live, so close to you, was something totally different.

I think the surreal world of a stage play is more realistic than that of a movie. Coined in a different way, a play is less surrealistic than a movie. (Depending on your point of view, the above two statements could be profound or pointless). Imagine. For once it was not the retaken, edited, mixed versions of the best, filtered performances of artists that were presented to me in a sequence of scenes called a movie, but things as they were played out (literally and figuratively) right before my eyes. What a dumb modern-day consumer of canned, recorded performances I have been so far! How different, exhilarating, and cathartic is this experience of consuming something as it is being delivered - Fresh! (Yeah. It is such a simple extension of freshly-made food tasting better, silly).

Though I am stating the blatantly obvious, performing arts need much more skill than movies just because of the fact that you do not have the backup of another "take". You face your audience directly. It is like an author penning down a thought-out story in a big book that everybody can read, as he writes it. Isn't it a bit shameful that writers cannot write live as actors act on stage? The actors practice before, yes but they perform in front of the audience. An author too thinks out the theme in solitude, but he cannot perform publicly. Actors should feel proud of their profession.