14th July 2009 will be a day I will remember forever. Today was my first public performance on stage. I had been a part of plays before in my school but this was a whole new experince. I was part of the play staged today at Ranga Shankara - Peetharohana, and I loved the experience. I have been practising my scene with my co-artists for the last couple of weeks and I have learnt a lot about what goes into putting up a play. This was totally different from what I was used to at school. Back then, it was merely putting on a good show with not much concentration on props and costumes and music as there were invariably restrictions imposed on those at the competitions. We merely concentrated on dialogue delivery then. But this time round I realised that dialogue delivery is the least of the concerns of the director. We need to focus on the lighting, effective utilisation of the props, effective positioning on the stage, movements and co-ordination with the fellow artists and the background musicians. The audience responded very well to the scenes and I have every reason to believe that the play was a success. I had a great time at the show and I hope to be back on the stage as soon as possible.