Post Production Blues

Theatre.

There is no way to really describe what a great theatre experience is. Words can never do it justice. When you watch a heartfelt piece that doesn't try to be smarter than you, when each character makes you fall in love with them, makes you want to help them, makes you cry and ache for them, you know they're burnt in your mind for a long time to come, and perhaps stamped in your heart for all eternity.

Now when you are one of the players, one of the actors, one of the souls whose stories have been told in that space, it's an experience like no other. Perhaps it's the nerves that tingle ever so slightly just to keep your heartbeat racing just so. Or it could be the echo of the musky floorboards that creak ever so lightly beneath the weight of your character's shifting emotions. Then again, who's to say it isn't the audience who fills the seats and adds warmth to an otherwise cold theatre. For some reason, the air conditioning is almost always near freezing and uncontrolled. Could it have a mind and personality of its own too?

Audience members who join us on our journeys each night are invited to open their hearts and souls to listen, to feel. Very often they invite us, the players, in as well. Sometimes we bash our way in without an invitation from them. This could shock, anger, surprise, sadden, or confuse them. Anything that ignites their imagination and emotions. Of course, we don't actively look for that reaction when we share our tales under the shadows and lights, since we respect our characters as real people who we would never exploit, but love and empathize with instead.

It is fluttery excitement yet relief to anticipate your first entrance, and to run up as slowly as you can for curtain call. Curtain call is when you can finally look into the audience and find familiar faces or simply appreciative smiles.

It has been one week since the show ended its run. Life, of course, goes on. But the glow you exude as a actor, even if visible only to yourself, keeps the memories bright in your mind. And like a stamp on your heart, each ventricle will never forget the intensity, meaning and moment that is theatre.

Written post Rojak, June 2013