Dabbling in Drama

My debut as an actor was when I was in the 2^nd grade in school. My class had enacted the story of  "The Old Lady and the Pumpkin" and I was chosen to play the old lady. So, the 7-year old me dressed up in my mom’s sari, wore talcum powder in my hair, wore spectacles without the glasses and as luck would have it, even managed to lose a tooth. So much for getting into character!

In the years after that, my stage appearances have been restricted to quizzing, singing and dancing. No more acting offers came my way! Until… I started my job. While I was in Mysore undergoing my training at Infosys, there was a lot of emphasis on soft skills (communication, articulation, presentation, etc) and the importance of these skills in today’s world. As a part of our training, we were to have a skit competition. The entire batch was divided into smaller groups and each group was supposed to present a short skit on “The importance of soft skills for a software professional”.

My friend Shabnam and I were in the same group. The others in our group were from different colleges and cities of India. After some brainstorming, we decided to do a remake of Charles Dickens’s classic “A Christmas Carol”. We changed the character of Scrooge into an IT engineer who although was good in her (yes, gender changes too) work, did not know how to interact with people and therefore lost out in life. We then showed the appearance of three ghosts and the transformation in the lead character and how she then lived happily ever after. Guess who was elected to be the rude, arrogant, mean Ms Scrooge? Yours truly.

We practiced and we practiced every day of the week. There was a lot of editing done to bring down our long script to a ten minute skit. We brought in props and costumes and even tried to add background music. On paper, everything looked simple. But to actually get this to work was pretty hard. Some of the people in our group were too loud, others too soft, and some others just unwilling to accept any changes in the script. We even had one person who refused to say the word “ghost” or wear black clothes. I honestly do not know why.

The three ghosts

At long last the day arrived. We were very excited and confident with our respective roles. One look into the audience and all the confidence died. The entire auditorium was filled. There were around 1000 people seated there!

Our problems began when we were told that we would be given only two mics. Our characters came onto the stage, but sharing one mic during a group conversation led to a lot of mess. We lost on time as the actors kept forgetting who to hand the mic to next. Things got worse when they didn’t notice that someone accidently switched off the mic. Nevertheless, the show must go on. I don’t think the audience could hear much, but they certainly had a good laugh as the “ghosts” came onto the stage in their wonderful, colorful costumes. The only mic working was mine. So to the audience, it looked like there was one mad woman shouting on stage, while the others were just moving their lips. The worst part? We were finally done with the skit and had far exceeded the time limit. I was the only person on stage and our narrator concluded and said “Thank you”. No applause. I thought the audience hadn’t realized that we were done, so I said “Thank you” again. Still no applause.  That’s when it hit me. The audience will clap only if the performance deserves it. With my head hung low I walked out of the stage and said “That sucked!” out loud, forgetting that my collar mic was still on. =S It was then that the audience began whispering amongst themselves. Poor Mr Charles Dickens must be shuddering somewhere in the world above.

Needless to say, our group did not win. I wanted to wear a mask for the remaining months at our training centre. This event can definitely qualify as one of the most embarrassing moments ever. For a long time, my friends were kind enough to constantly remind Shabnam and me of our little production.

Not to say I didn’t take anything away from this. I learnt that I should stick to music and dance. Drama? Not really my cup of tea!