The Sermon on the Stage

Do you remember the first time you saw someone perform on a stage?

You do? Lucky you. Because I don’t. And I wish I did.

Right now I’m in a car (not driving), on my way to a performing arts theatre in New Delhi. It’s META week, and I’m about to watch two plays back to back.

What’s META? Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards and Festival. A week long celebration of the best in Indian theatre over the past year. 9 plays, from all over the country and in diverse languages, were picked from over 400 submissions to be performed and applauded.

Last night I saw Maya Krishna Rao’s one-woman performance of Loose Woman (in English). Tonight I’ll be seeing two productions - Andha Yug (in Gujarati with English subtitles), and Bhagi Hui Ladkiyan (in Hindustani).

Rao’s show last night was mesmerizing. As I watched her perform non-stop for 75 minutes (and the word perform is key - she spoke, she sang, she danced, she hypnotized) I asked myself a question: what is my first memory of being in the audience of a staged theatrical production?

I thought about it all night. Nothing extraordinary came to mind.

The earliest ‘live performance' I could remember was seeing Jagjit Singh in concert when I was maybe 6 or 7. I did have some school plays, and honestly I don’t even remember if I acted in one ever, but right now, at the age of 29 I can’t remember anything leaving a lasting impression on me.

But professionally-produced theatre - that didn’t enter my life until college. I lived in La Jolla, California which was home to several theatres, the most popular of which is the La Jolla Playhouse. That’s where I saw magic happen when I was about 20 or 21. That magic was called Jesus Christ Superstar.

I’ve been very vocal through my guides and podcast about how I’m a lifelong fan of movies and TV. Along with books, these were my primary modes of experiencing stories since I was a kid.

When I was 18, I took a class called "Theater & Film”. The premise of the class was to watch a movie that was adapted from a play, and then read the play script, and then talk about (and also write about) how they differ, which was more authentic, et al. I had never read a play before this class, and I was immediately drawn to the medium.

A story told primarily through dialogue?! That’s just like a movie! I want to learn how to do this!

So I started studying playwriting. I’d catch whatever play I could in La Jolla or the greater San Diego area. As much as I loved the writing, it was the performing aspect that I was really drawn to.

I just couldn’t understand why these actors would want to perform the same thing over and over again, day by day, week by week.

I mean, sure, 500 years ago when Shakespeare was around and writing incredible dramas, people would flock to the theatre to see them being performed. But this was before performances could be recorded. This was before Netflix!

It wasn’t until I watched Jesus Christ Superstar that I got the answer to my question.

They perform it for us - the audience.

Storytellers already know the story. But we don’t. So they perform their stories so we can know what they know. And when they do it live in a theatre, they are giving us all this information, and their unique perspective, at the same time.

Hold on. I’m almost at the theatre, so I’ll continue the rest of this guide after I’ve seen the plays. For you, that gap will be just a second. For me, a few hours.

So, in a way, you’re about to time travel! Right…

…now.

Hi again. I’m back. So, funny thing happened. I stopped typing this guide about 15 minutes before we reached the venue because my head was starting to hurt due to the scorching sun. As soon as I did that, we hit some traffic, and missed reaching the theatre in time for the play’s start. Instead of joining in late, which I never want to do - out of respect for the storyteller, and also because I don’t like missing even a second of a story - we just passed time till the start of the second play.

These 9 plays are only going to be performed once, since it’s for the awards exclusively. So when I missed that play, I realized that I will never see that story happen. At least, not this one particularly. And definitely not with this audience.

I missed the opportunity to experience a story that I wasn’t even going to understand without reading subtitles. And that upsets me a bit.

Anyway, back to Jesus Christ Superstar. It changed the way I saw this medium of storytelling. To tell a story to a live audience, I couldn’t think of something more exhilarating and mesmerizing.

It got me thinking - where else does this happen?

The classroom.

The classroom is theatre. Information is being given by someone on a stage, who knows things, to an audience, who don’t.

Here’s the problem though - most classrooms, at least the ones I grew up in, are like bad theatre.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful though, if our classrooms were hooked-to-your-seats theatre? Where we learned things through stories, so we would know what to care about, how to be morally conscious and good people, and so much more.

I started going to the theatre to learn more. To hear stories I didn’t know. To live lives I may never live.

The second play today, the one I did make it to, featured four high school girls sharing stories from their lives by inviting the audience to the stage and walking them through their miniaturized streets.

It was funny. It was the classroom theatre I had fall in love with years ago.

But this time, the students were up on the stage, and us adults were the ones listening.

That’s all I have to say about this, for now. I have some writing to get to, which I will be talking about on this week’s Storytalking With Lakshya, aka my little audio theatre. Hope you’ll give it a listen.

Happy storytelling.