Today was an important day. It was the day of Background Work. Isha and I had kept today – Wednesday, the 22nd of April – for this reason itself. No rehearsals, no practices were scheduled. Today, we were going to do the core work – and we planned to complete it.

There was a lot to be done. Several unmade props written in red ink on our list had begun to incessantly shriek at us from the paper; our ginormous and ridiculously detailed list of costume ideas wanted verification; 3-4 lengthy word documents had started to ask if they were ever going to be written; banners, important drawings and three different stage set ups for 8 scenes did not seem to be on paper yet; the lights and sounds were waiting to be explained to the kind volunteer moms whom we had recently roped into the production process.

Did I mention that there was a lot to be done?

But we were not worried. We knew that we were capable to doing all of it. Although our previous productions had all stretched for a minimum of 2 months (which is a lot of time to get things done properly), we knew that where there is a will, there is a way.

And there was no shortage of will.

Isha came over at 12:30 in the afternoon, and we got down to work immediately. While she worked on the stage set-up diagrams, I worked on the scarecrow’s costume. I had asked our kind household helper (Manju-akaa) to gather some hay from her village the previous day. She had gotten a big bag back for us to use. I stuck and sewed and fixed the hay onto the straw hat, the striped button down and the patched pants (the “patches” on the pants were painted on by us). After that I carved out an axe from a thick thermocol sheet and painted it. We broke for a quick lunch and then started the tedious work of recording and logging. The footage we had of previous practices helped us tremendously. It’s interesting – we found it hard to recall what we had done barely a week ago. We had to use references and little memories to piece our recollections together. It can be inferred from that 1 and ½ hour sitting that we had come a long way from the situation a week ago. Truly, work was happening at the speed of light. We had accomplished a lot!

At 3:30pm, we crossed the big task of logging off our list. We then split the work again: I worked on the documents while Isha made detailed and seft explanatory guides for the volunteer moms and made hard copies of our important lists – after all, you can’t entirely rely on soft copies, now can you? I then finished off a couple more costumes before we left for a few houses – Meera aunty’s house to explain the light system, Ganeev’s house for an individual practice, and Rashi’s house for checking out some props.

At 6pm, we rechecked the massive list and with great joy (and a tad bit of relief) crossed out a bunch of things. Ah, the lists had grown so, so much smaller. What was left in most of them was now only what had to be done on the days of the shows.

 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 24^th and 27^th would be ideal to host more shows – at least one more. We called up our crew and we all agreed that Sunday, the 26^th , 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!