Quote of the month:

“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

-Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

To be completely honest, the feeling isn’t even coldness per se, it’s more like emptiness. You’ll feel light and you’ll move swiftly, but not because you want to. It’s nothing but adrenaline, and it consumes your neck and shoulders, leaving behind chilly sweat.

Theater is a fleeting art form. You can either fill a blank canvas with your own colors and it’ll last forever, or you can make a movie that’ll play the same every time. But in theater, you have just one shot, one instant of gratification when every minute of rehearsal pays off.

Cruelly, if it doesn’t go right that night, nothing can be done. It is what it is. The audience will only take away what they saw that night, not the previous rehearsal when everything went perfectly.

In 2010, on a whim, I tried acting, joining the annual spring production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Before that, I had never thought seriously about acting. After landing a small role, I fully took advantage of the privilege of working with some unbelievably talented seniors. Fast-forward a year and I’ve been in other shows and gained more experience. Despite all of this, I’ve learned that experience will only get you so far in this field. You have to be willing to work hard and work out of your comfort zone if you wish to find success in theater.

I’ve realized that the things that terrify us, the things that give us sleepless nights and hit us worst after failures are also the ones that we work the hardest at. Theater isn’t my first love, but it’s one I can’t get away from. Every year around March, those delicious heart pounding backstage moments call me right back. To me, absolutely nothing can compare to those moments when you’re backstage in darkness, those moments when you don’t know whether to sit, stand, pace around or run out of the building screaming.

Are you nervous? No. By now you’ve memorized every line to death and left nothing to chance. Still, there’s a lingering feeling of doubt.

Maybe today is the day you’ll mess up. Maybe today is the day when the audience doesn’t respond. Maybe today is the day your scene partner will skip a line.

Maybe today- and suddenly, none of it matters anymore. Lights up.

Ayush Kumar can be contacted at [email protected]