The day started at 10am, which was when we left for the costume shop Fantasy Creations in Bellandur. My mother, Ganeev and Isha accompanied me. It was a fruitful trip; Ganeev found a pre-made costume that fit him correctly (we had been searching for a full body suit) and even suitable head gear. We picked out a good witches hat for myself, and, using my height as measurement, managed to pick out a costume for Megha’s character, too. We also found head bands with devil horns on them (they were akin to what we had in mind!) for our minions. We requested for these items to be kept aside for us. The costume ideas were becoming a reality!
At 12pm, we returned home. By now the hot afternoon sun had drained us of energy, and we were yearning to be cooled off. However, we couldn’t relax just yet. We immediately directed our remaining energy to prop collection – we had, two years ago, made 8-10 trees and bushes out of thermocol and paint. They were beautiful and colourful. They were made for the purpose of the play itself, so we had stored them at my grandparents’ house, knowing that when the time for the play came, we could take them out again. Needless to say, it was a dusty job. We were filthy by the time we painstakingly and carefully got the trees down from their perch on top of an old cupboard where they had been collecting dust for two years. But that’s all a part of the fun!
We then discussed the possibility of performing more shows looking at the effort that we all were putting into the production. We decided that it would be a good idea. Our other plays had one show each- despite the sense of finality that the only show provided to us, it was unfortunately almost like a waste of effort. Months of preparation for just one show – it wasn’t fair to the crew either. We didn’t want to repeat this ‘mistake’ (as we considered it) again. We decided that the weekend between the 24th and 27th would be ideal to host more shows – at least one more. We called up our crew and we all agreed that Sunday, the 26th , would be ideal.
We contacted a couple of orphanages right after. All the philanthropists who answered our calls were excited about the idea for the performance, but needed to obtain assent from a couple other people before getting back to us.
After writing and replying to some play-related emails, we went home a 1:30pm. After lunch, the crew met at 2pm in the practice room of the clubhouse, where we rehearsed for an hour. At 3pm, we resumed discussion of play matters and schedule making. It was a one hour long work session. At around 4pm, we decided to stretch our muscles (which had begun to cramp from sitting in front of the laptop and bending over books for so long) by going to Megha’s house to discuss costume developments and practice individually with her for a bit. We then came back home in time for an instrument practice we scheduled with Rashi in which we ran through the whole play a few times with the piano queues. Practice ended at 5:30pm. I had a Bharatnatyum class to attend, so Isha and I decided to meet again at 9pm, which was when we had told Kusum Aunty, who had volunteered to do the make-up and costumes checking, that we would meet her to tell her what kind of make-up we had in mind for each character, etc.
So at 9pm we were at Kusum Aunty’s house, discussing just that. Also, since Pranay had not been able to make it to the evening practice at 4:30pm, we decided to meet up at 9am tomorrow to practice the guitar queues. We finished the detailed discussion at around 9:30pm, and we ceased work for the day.
I wonder what tomorrow has in store for us!