This article was written for Volume 6 e-journal of www.arbharconsulting.com
Over the
last many months, I was involved in staging a Tamil play here staged by Avant Theatre in Singapore. With
a huge cast (17 of them), huger canvas (2+ hours of play with period costumes,
weaponry, 500+ audience, high-tech graphics, live music, excellent lyrical
dialogues… you get the drift!), hugest challenges (rehearsals during COVID-19
restrictions were a nightmare; it became complex when one of the crew was
affected by the darn virus; changing government rules; increasing costs…), it
was an experience like none other.
I have
always been fascinated by the performing arts industry. After being part of a
few productions – a few personal ones as well as Avant's, the amount of planning
that goes into each and every aspect of the finished-product is mind-boggling.
It is not like the movie industry, where the end-product is kind of available for posterity for many more years to come; whereas in a live performance – dance or play, all that pre-struggle is for only those few hours when the performance is on, right? Absolutely.
What drives
that laser-like focus? It is the fire that keeps burning in the creator’s mind
and heart. One must give the best; one must value the time that the audience
has invested in the show; and one must create a page in history that is worth a
repeat – all these factors drive it further. It is rare to find such creators
as many eager creators compromise at various steps of the process resulting in
a shoddy product.
My
experience was as the de facto No. 2 of the production. Being the Assistant
Director of the play was the proverbial eye-opener. One had to be the eyes (no
pun intended!) and ears for the Director. You must be the
executor-par-excellence for the Director. At times, you must be the creative
soundboard for the Director. Well, you will be the go-between for the artistes
and the Director – they should not be seared by the fire of his creativity, you
see!
You must be
able to deal with everyday changes:
- Change the green costume to blue. Green is yucky in the lights!
- Those swords are too heavy? You can use both hands now.
- Can you focus on your pronunciation? You are literally killing the meaning! (Tamil speakers will empathize with the hazards of pronouncing la, La and zha ல/ள/ழ 😊)
- We must reposition the logo on the magazine as the design clashes with it
- How do we get the pre-event COVID-19 testing organized?
- What is the food arrangement?
- Can we get sponsors? Even $100 is good to start with!
- Why are the 3D-Graphics so tacky?
- I can’t be at the rehearsals today as I have an ingrown nail!
- There are no mirrors in the makeup room!
- The list just went on and on. But it was exhilarating, alright!
To carry
out these and other myriad tasks, the only tools that I, as an Assistant
Director could use were the art of negotiation; appeal to good sense of the
people who you are dealing with; different types of communication; ability to
bounce off from a pasting by the Director and of course, oodles of patience.
In the
corporate world with a clear line of reporting and escalation paths, getting
something done is relatively easy. Yes, I can hear you snigger there! But trust
me! With a very flat organization (boss and the rest), and in a change-intense
atmosphere, it was like a true start-up. To use the corporate parlance, being a
No. 2 in such an environment meant that you have no chance of
either influencing their year-end performance appraisal or decide on their
bonuses; yet you need them to get your project successful. Sounds familiar?
Yes, that is the feeling!
So, what
helped it to work?
- A clear understanding of what we want to achieve, sharing and repeating it multiple times to the team. Importance of #SharedVision cannot be emphasized any more.
- Utilize the scarce resources as much as possible. Once #1 above is done, and a strong sense of ownership is established, enroll some of the people to double-hat; an actor can be a stunt master as well; scriptwriter can be the magazine-designer as well…
- At the same time, strike a balance on not overloading the team, especially the actors. As it is, they will be nervous about the lines and emoting. Adding additional responsibilities must be managed carefully.
- Be flexible yet firm; creative people tend to do almost everything last minute. So, there must always be a Plan B. After the first show, a few areas took much longer than envisaged. So, an additional snippet of a scene was introduced to make it seamless. Plan C, you say!
- Communicate to death. With close to a 40-member cast and crew team & at least ten WhatsApp groups to manage, miscommunication was bound to happen, and it did. Be ready to acknowledge and correct the course again and again and again.
- Since it was an amateur play, the only reward at the end is the approbation from the audience. Every one of us yearn for recognition and appeal to that vanity! It works wonders!
Valuable lessons, they were. Naturally, the exhilaration one had after the successful staging of three shows in front of an appreciative audience was much better than some of the complex software cutovers that one had been part of! Partly because this was achieved with attributes NOT associated with command-and-control method of management! As they say, pyaar se…
#HowToFinish #sriGINthoughts #Abhimanyu
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