My Fair Mrs. Pierce

Everyone saw what went up on stage but nobody saw what went into putting it up there. That’s the thought that comes to my mind whenever someone talks about my senior play.

I was chosen to play Mrs. Pierce in the ‘My Fair Lady’. Now, let me tell you that Mrs. Pierce is a very important character. She’s housekeeper to the male protagonist, Prof. Higgins. Considering what a fussy man Higgins is, you can understand how important Mrs. Pierce is in the play. Being in the play wasn’t just a school activity for me. My grandfather worked as an actor-director in many plays in his time and some of them went on to become hits in parts of Bengal. On the day of the play, he would be in Navi Mumbai. Being in the play was my opportunity to show him my acting skills just once.

For those of you who don't know what 'My Fair Lady' is all about, here's the plot: Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl who isn't exactly the quintessential definition of claass. A chance meeting with phonetics expert Henry Higgins opens new doors for her, as she now wishes to take lessons from him to improve her speech. Higgins,a full-of-himself British gentlemen, is quite sure that he can transform Eliza into a woman of society in a matter of weeks. What follows is a humorous journey full of speech training, some of them involving saying vowels day in and day out, speaking with a mouth full of marbles and repeating tongue-twisters. Then comes a point when Eliza is ready to leave emerge into society without Higgins by her side, but perhaps that's not exactly what she wants.

Even though the day we performed is clearly etched in my memory, what really affected me personally were the days of practice. For those of you who have never been in a play, I should tell you that it takes a lot of work on the part of actors, directors and coordinators. Starting from the day of casting, we all worked extremely hard to get every line right. We were trained as to how we should raise or lower our voice, how we should move, how our expressions should be- all to make our characters look more authentic. It made me believe that no matter how good actors are, they are nothing without the director, which in our case were the teachers-in-charge. It’s with the help of their vision that actors deliver a performance. Without them, the play is a blank slate full of improvisations with probably no coherence.

Costumes play a big part of any play. Through them, we turned from twenty-first century school student from Navi Mumbai to ladies and gentlemen of Georgian England. In flowed the coats, skirts and heels. We borrowed from our friends, went to costume stores, tried on dresses for size and left no stone unturned to make our clothes authentic. Everybody had their signature costume pieces. I had my pink gown and white apron (I had never imagined I would be wearing something like that one day). Eliza’s father, Doolittle, had his cap which he wore even during rehearsals and everybody fell in love with it. Higgins had his prim suits but his most remarkable outfit was the one in the first scene, a trench coat strikingly similar to the ones worn by actors in the movie and stage adaptations of ‘My Fair Lady’. I should tell you that the coat is actually meant for winters. While you saw a calm and composed Higgins on stage, the actor, who also happens to be our Head Boy, was sweating profusely. From day one, Eliza’s multiple costume changes were a concern. We managed to get a copy of the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in a scene in the movie and were worried she won’t be able to change out of it in time. She did, and she made it look easy. The thing that was hardest to get were Carpathy’s medals and they showed up only on the day of the performance.

A special mention must be made of the dances that were in the play. Without them, our play wouldn’t have been what it was- a musical. It was because of the dancers that the play became so entertaining. The ballroom dance sequence got a lot of attention from the day the rehearsals began. It stood up to expectations. The market dance, which was the opening act of the play, set up the world Eliza originally inhabited. The helper’s chorus showed the frustration of the people working at Mr. Higgins due to Eliza’s intense training session. Some of the songs were acted out by the main actors. I was in the song ‘I Could’ve Danced All Night’. It was my grandfather’s favorite moment in the play.

I admit- I do want to relive the curtain call, listen to the applause on more time, wave out to the audience again and just be on stage, but I know that won’t be what I will remember ten years from now. I will remember the stay backs and coming early to school. I will remember making plans to make everything look good on stage, getting props and watching the stage take its final form. I will remember the first and perhaps the only time I went to a recording studio. I will remember my pink dress which I’ll probably never wear again. I will think about Higgins, Carpathy, Doolittle and Pickering taking some time off rehearsals because the India-Pakistan match was on air and they needed to get score updates somehow and discuss the game. I’ll look back on the children who were in the helper’s chorus, whose sequence I helped choreograph. I will want to relive the final moment, but I’ll carry the journey that brought me and my friends  there forever.