Shining the Spotlight
Leela Basu
I spent years basking in the spotlight. These days, I find my place shining the spotlight on others.
As a kid, I craved attention. I was a junkie for the high, only interested in activities that sated my hunger; soccer’s charm ran out at the same time as the orange slices, and gymnastics was gone when I was the last to touch my toes. Only two activities really stuck: dance and acting. I took to both easily, earning me the title role in my elementary school play The Snow Queen and the chance to skip a level in dance before my first year concluded. Nothing could keep me from the bright lights; on opening night of The Snow Queen, my words were slurred from the anesthesia I had received earlier that day. The 6 new stitches on my chin, courtesy of the playground asphalt, were the finishing touch to my costume.
Years later, I am breaking into my high school’s lighting booth through the window I left open last night. The spring air outside is inviting, but our production of Les Miserables opens in one week. The desk lamp has been my sun for the past 14 days of lunches and free periods, evident by piles of crushed energy drink cans and a faint stench of stale Febreze. The tiny trash can overflows with doordash containers leftover from late night discussion of color motifs and symbolism we can only hope will register subconsciously for the audience. The walls are plastered in post-its, half lighting related, half various requests that have somehow fallen into my lap: hairspray for the costume team, more band-aids in the first aid kit, a catering plan for our post-show party. I am alone; the lighting team was congratulated for finishing all our cues days ago, but the list of edits in my mind is endless. As Head of Lighting, I refuse to force my team back into this concrete room, thus my solitude.
Logic tells me the cues are perfectly functional, that all the actors need is basic visibility, but something deeper reminds me that this show is larger than just the actors. Our story of camaraderie and grit is told as much through the increasing intensity of my red lights as it is the soldiers' three part harmony. That the Enjolras’s broken cafe chair portrays a story of loss, and warrants the same care in shadow composition as Gavroche’s last breath. In two days, I will bring the lights up on this show with the people I’ve grown to consider family: our tech director, formerly a professional clown who will likely deliver his motivational pre-show speech by doing the worm; the sound head I busted a move with during a calculus rap in the last talent show; even my freshman whose prodigal lighting talent quickly outgrew my guidance, but not our pre-show breakfast. Together, we will tell a story, as humans have been doing since antiquity. Each of us tells our own story, and together they will weave one that leaves the audience stumbling out of the aisles when the curtain closes. The anticipation is all I need to start up the ancient lighting board and get to work.
When I am here, at the very back of the theater, dressed from head to toe in black, nobody will see me. Yet, a familiar adrenaline once only spurred only by eyes on me is present, rooting in the intimate connection between me and the 3000-odd strangers and friends in the room. Even when I do hit the stage myself now, I no longer just dance gasping for the biggest smile or highest leg. Me and the girls who have shared calluses, tears, and bobby pins with me breathe in total sync. The realization comforts me more than the spotlight on my face ever could.
