I’m not going to write about Neil Simon. It is a big loss, and we should certainly spare a moment of silence for it, but he leaves behind a wonderful body of work, a legacy that will live on (and be plagiarised) forever. And after that moment of poignant silence, please laugh. I’m pretty sure he would have liked that.
When we performed in August at the Metro Plus theatre festival in Chennai’s beautiful Museum Theatre, there was a mishap. One of our actresses, while rehearsing her bit in group choreography, got her hand into a pedestal fan.
Hardly lucky
The blade broke, but also cut her hand up pretty badly. The stage had blood splatters across it, and the cast and support staff had advice that ranged from practical and helpful to distraught and emotional. The former is always better in a crisis. Meena Singh, the tough girl in question, got a dozen stitches, popped some painkillers, and did the show. Which must go on, proverbially and literally.
This article is a throwback to show-day injuries. The earliest dates back to the first show of our first-ever production. An actor called Dirk Rodricks is supposed to be hit on the head with a plank of wood, and the character proceeds to pass out. The plank did hit him, or rather a corner of it did, and he was genuinely unconscious. Other actors then have to carry him across stage, but got no help from him. Which is when they saw a gash, and realised the gravity of the situation. Fortunately, he had to remain unconscious till interval. Unfortunately, he came to his senses as the curtain was closing for interval, but was forcefully held down by another actor’s leg.
That paved the way for head injuries. Two prominent ones come to mind. Prerna Chawla, an actress playing a child much younger than her real age in a play for children, walked into a solid wooden wing while making an entry. She regained her composure and went into her scene, unaware that blood was streaming down her face, and was even more disoriented when her co-actors kept coming up with creative improvisations to get her to leave stage.
In another instance, Lucky Vakharia, playing a crazy old Christian lady, had to swing her dead husband’s hockey stick at a corrupt cop, played by Aseem Hattangady. In one show, the phantom swing went rogue and landed. In the blackout that followed, Aseem burst into the tech booth looking like Carrie (which is a Stephen King reference to avoid gory details) and had to miss the curtain call because he was busy getting stitches from a clinic across the road. He remains to this day scared of hockey sticks. And of Lucky.
Crisis management
Foot injuries are also quite a fad with us. Despite stages being swept, the stray nail or staple pin finds its way into someone’s foot. On more than one occasion we’ve had people fall down stairs in the dark just before a show, after which they’ve performed with a limp and a crepe bandage. In one instance, though, an actor cut his ankle open, and he had to be replaced for an entire show with less than half an hour to prepare for it.
What was trickier was that the person running sound, who was also the director, was the one who took him to hospital. So the actors worked out a solution, and took on his roles, with one actor with musical tendencies (he is now a bona fide rapper) standing in the wings and creating sound effects like train whistles and bells ringing. I think that may be one of the most memorable shows we have ever had. Triumph of the human spirit, the marvels of teamwork, crisis management and all that.
The stage is a dangerous place, and theatre is a dangerous profession. Bruises are commonplace, particularly if you’re being roughed up by a method actor. I myself had lower back trouble for a while owing to a mistimed collision on stage. (It’s true. You do see stars.)
The most alarming incident I witnessed was in a show of Noises Off , where an actor dislocated his shoulder on stage, and the remaining acts had to be performed by a replacement actor. After an initial double take, no one in the audience was affected by it in the slightest. That’s the magic of storytelling right there for you.
As for this hazardous line of work we’ve chosen, like Neil Simon famously said, “If you can go through life without experiencing pain, you probably haven’t been born yet.”
The writer is a theatre producer and director and hence often broke. To cope, he writes and directs films and web series and occasionally acts, albeit reluctantly.
