ಪ್ರಸಂಗ 7: "Pop goes the bubble."

“May my tongue be deprived of my body, should fate bode so!” and I proceeded to shift my posture to accommodate a rather hastily but stretched exercise of convincing her majesty, the Queen of Vidisha to a political alliance, that involved her joining her husband, My king, Aginimitra of Vidisha. This is business as usual. I say this and the queen agrees and I later proceed to further this comedy of errors into a romantic ending. What could possibly go wrong when an entire palace is gaffing around the very definition of the institution of marriage and society right around the time when man thought he could finally call the earth home!

Except everything did! When I was shifting my posture at around 9 PM IST on the 21st July 2019 at Melehalli’s V Ramamurthy Auditorium, I was transported. From Vidisha’s grand palace in 150 BCE to the void space of existential conflict, that was affected by no idea of time. The gaze of my director’s eyes stranded me. Right there, at that very instant, for my folly, I had become Amith R B on stage, while clad as Vidisha’s Vidooshaka. It might have been fear of portraying the character. It might have been the power with which my mind toggled and sat hard on the construction of time upon seeing my director’s eyes which suggested the puzzle that I had for the audience to complete about me for no reason. It might have been the Vidooshaka I had birthed for all I know.

It took me no mirror to point that on stage, that after months of rigorous rehearsals, improv sessions and run-throughs I had birthed a Gautama who was a fiend. Stare into his eyes and the void it leads you into has no end. It loops into confusion. Without shadow. All hollow and no sound.

As dramatic as my description of one instance seems, it was an important textbook acting lesson that I learned that day. The art of understanding a character (I can’t swear by understanding it yet either), tailoring my description of that character to the vision of the director. It didn’t take me the enormous baggage of experience she carried behind her as she invested her time to teach us acting, nor had any effect, the daily routine monotony of exercising the dialogue, all it took was one stare. That one stare into my eye and to my brain, came down on me like oblivion! No wonder actors try to become the character than voice words knitted together by grammar!

Amith R B has been a part of Dhrushya since 2019 and has been contributing to theatre ever since. Currently he is working as an Automotive Engineer in Continental Automotive Components India PVT LTD.

Art by Sammruddhi Gowda. Click here to check out her art