The WALTZ - acting in my first scripted play in ages! Thanks to CATS - Coimbatore Arts & Theatre Society!
Shorts in the Dark - an event by CATS (Coimbatore Arts and Theatre Society) hosted by ITC - WelcomeHotel, Coimbatore...
The script- The Waltz , a play by octogenarian writer and activist Vithal Rajan given to us by founder KV Siddhartha of CATS...
The players - 2 actors (Pradeep Yuvaraj and Me) who are taking to scripted stage after many many years...and have 20 minutes to portray an elderly couple and their contemplation of life, illness and death.
The director - Rohini Sivalingam, for whom this was her first directorial process, came with clarity on what she wanted, amazing visualisation and an understanding of stage craft...
It was...
an experience of a life time!
Perhaps the first of many more!!
As a Storyteller I am used to freestyling and improvising on stage, but as an Actor, it was a huge learning -
👌Learning lines and remembering them was one part, delivering it with correct expression and body language and making it look like a dialogue and not a monologue...
👌Knowing the right amount of Pause between words and between dialogues to make the flow happen
👌To read between the text into the emotions - (wow...this was huge)...and our director helped a lot in this...
👌Building suspense and at the same time transitioning into different emotions which were changing every 5 minutes...
👌Staying in character...and also being an observer to assess if things are going as per plan...
👌All this while also keeping track of audience response - so that we don't falter or freeze or unknowingly respond - in fact as a storyteller we are encouraged to include audience response, so it takes a lot of presence as an actor to continue without visibly responding...
👌Finally, the director telling us not to move while playing dead and count to 10 after lights off, before being resurrected 😅😂
Deepest gratitude to co- actor Pradeep Yuvaraj (a renowned Busines Storyteller from Coimbatore) for being such a sport and being totally present for all rehearsals inspite of his busy work schedule.
Theatre, Stage, Story, Script, Rehearsals, Craft, Art
...When we find Creative Communities where ever we go
...then Life is made!!
ssstoryteller
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