Each performance is different..........

Three months of intense rehearsals - the whole goal is to get to a point where each of us can consistently deliver our character. But come performance time, you as an actor feel very different about every single show. 6 of 7 shows for TUGHLAQ are done and I have felt different after each show. So many things can affect it: Pre-show warm-up or last minute missing prop or a fumbled dialog or even a word or just that invisible / intangible something.

You tell yourself to block all the distractions out, get in the zone, don't let little (or even major) things affect you. The players psyche themselves - you see baseball pitchers talking to themselves on the mound, football (the World kind, not the American kind) getting in each other's face, Harbhajan Singh & Shoaib Akhtar throwing profanities at each other heard by the worldwide web audience.....all to get the adrenaline going, help excelling on the job, performing above and beyond any rehearsal, practice sessions they may have. That's what we do:  on the way to the performance in the car and while getting make-up done and in the pre-show warm-up and right before stepping on the stage.....then.....

.... then.... that invisible/intangible thing hits you making or breaking the performance - in YOUR mind. The audience loves them all but YOU as a performer can rank each of the performance from top to bottom. What is that thing?