Hoist the curtain

DUDE!

Tonight's our preview.

No more rehearsals, no more making things and carving things and cutting things and adjusting things (oh who am I kidding? I'll be adjusting my pretty little head off until the 23rd), no more reads and changes, no more empty Dram, no more just us watching the play being run night after night after night.

Tomorrow is our opening night. People are buying tickets (oh, that reminds me. I must go empty my bank account to make sure my friends get seats), people are going to come, people are planning their evenings based on OUR PLAY!

I am so excited. The excitement is bubbling up in me (you can't tell, but I am swiftly resisting an urge to check the script to quote a line) and quietly erasing memories of having breakdowns while all alone in that black box of a space we've been rehearsing in.

For weeks, this play started out to me as nothing more than a blank, lined picture. Bland, white, clean. So perfect for grand possibilities.

Then we - yes, we, the cast, the crew, the director, the audience, the space - started with the smudging and the heavy handling and the messy fingerprints and spilt paint and styrofoam bits and paper strips and lint and that clean, white (resisting urge to quote script AGAIN!) picture was clean and white no more.

Weeks grew into more weeks, and I saw the play as a paint-by-numbers piece, and blank, gaping pieces freaked me out more than it inspired me. I was frantic, scribbling in colours as fast as I could, messy, unorganized, all over the lines. Seems every time I managed to neatly finish a small blue section, the blaring red screamed out to me "Finish me! Finish me!"

Now weeks and weeks grew into days and hours. We abandoned grand ambition and settled for compromises. We abandoned all sense of colour and shape and things started looking messier than they've ever been.

And finally.

That clean white page on which the paint-by-numbers sections were drawn on so carefully has now turned into this giant collage, heavy with glue and pictures and colours and shapes and smudges and time. Sweat from the drilling and the climbing of ladders. Blood from my pricked fingers as I attempted to sow. And tears from that faraway time when I thought I couldn't do it and I would disappoint everyone.

I wish I could have seen then how beautifully everyone else (the wonderful, fantabulous, magnificently talented cast, the diligent Nurul whose company helped me survive those long hours in the Dram, the quietly brilliant Jason, the too-nice-to-be-true and all around helpful Ashaari and of course, the eternally patient and soothing (even if I don't want to admit it) Kelvin) would cover the gaps and fill in the spaces. That amazing foresight would've saved on a lot of despair.

Too late for that now.

The Illusion begins tonight (well, really tomorrow night, but let's say tonight for argument's sake) and I am so excited to unveil our collaborative effort to you.