Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Extremes

Enough is enough! I am going to write! Caution: If you find this post crappy, please forgive – this is my attempt to get over my block and I am determined to write something…even if it is crappy!

Last week I found myself in Bombay with a free evening with nothing to do. Tuhin, a friend who works for my ad agency was traveling with me suggested we go and see a play in the Prithvi theatre, which was quite close to the Hotel where we were staying. I have not seen a play in a theatre for many years now and jumped at the opportunity immediately. Anyways, we reached Prithvi and luckily got tickets for the night show for a Hindi play called “Bali aur Shambhu”.

Before, coming to the play we had spent the day in a studio supervising the post-production work that was happening on the latest TV commercial that we were working on for my company.

During the day, we were playing with frames, sound light etc. We were changing things at whim- even expressions can be changed by slowing them or speeding them. And in the evening we were in this completely different environment – the live theatre. Where we could reach out and touch the actors if we wanted, here I could almost feel the vibrations from the actors booming voice touch my skin. There was no scope to fix an expression; also there was no possibility to see the mistake again. The vector was however the same – that of telling a story by enacting it. The day was quite a yoyo for me in a sense, swinging between two extreme ends of the communication spectrum/vector.

What I realized is this, when you get exposed to the two extremes on the same vector of expression, you get a great understanding of the vector itself and also of the two extremes. If you want to play in the center (Like most of us do in our own vectors), I guess it would help us to visit the extremes ones in a while. If not anything else, it will at least help us define our centers a bit better.