Beautiful

I’ve been working on the first NYUAD student production- an adaptation and retelling of the Hindu epic The Ramayana. I was a stage management apprentice to start with, and then got shifted to a lighting design apprentice as the show came closer to opening night.

I saw the process from first read to final dress rehearsal, and then watched the closing show as a member of the audience. Even though I saw the performance go through so many stages, seeing it that final time, it was like a new show- with the masks, the costumes, the energy that the audience brought to the actors- the conversation was reborn.

It was beautiful, and reinforces my knowledge that all the hours are worth it, and that this is what I want to do.

(I don’t know yet in what capacity- maybe stage management, or dramaturgy, or design, or playwriting, or directing. But somehow.)

And now the show’s over. That is one of the beauties of theater- it is impermanent, and in that, aligns directly with human nature, but also battles human nature.

Nothing lasts, and our mortality alone is proof of that. But we try so desperately to hold on, to stop time, to make things stay.

That is an impossible attempt. As much as we try to fight our natures of impermanence, we fail at that. Theater is created, and then lives only through memory. You can’t freeze a performance, nor can you freeze a moment.

And in that, there is beauty. Memory preserves, but it also elevates.

However, we humans will still strive to live in that impossible attempt. And in that, there is beauty as well. 

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