Topic: A show

Author: Chris Dunn

The lights are still up, and the crowd continues its slow, staggered entry, filing to their chairs or stopping to converse with discovered friends, already seated. Pre-show music rides above it all, setting the mood for the event to come. Others crowd the lobby area, checking the display for faces they know or have at least seen before. But me, I’m already seated. I have no need to chat with friends now. I’m busy, busy scanning the periphery of the house for telltale sign of trouble.

Unless you’ve worked a show, you won’t know what to look for. At a show, an emergency isn’t like a fire alarm. There aren’t bells and whistles, no screaming sirens, but you’ll know for certain that something has gone horribly awry, if you see someone dressed in black, wearing a headset, and walking fast. You don’t run. You never run. You stand bolt upright with a forced smile, and you do that quick, shuffly step. As soon as I see that, I know something isn’t right. A player has missed call or disappeared on a smoke break. A prop is out of place, or the curtain rope has snapped two feet from the ceiling. Look for it the next time you find yourself at the theater. The straighter the spine, the quicker the shuffle – the worse the issue at hand.

The first show my mother roped me into, I thought I’d get by just being the assistant director. You know, get my feet wet, test the waters see if showbiz was for me. But no, as tech week drew to a close, and I looked forward to returning to my normal gaming schedule, she came to me and asked, “Okay, so do you want to work sound or props?” She liked to lay traps like that. She was a lawyer in her previous life. Note how the questions seems to offer options, but they’re both options wherein – no matter what I decide – I’m doing something she wants. “Go home and play video games,” was not an option. And, to be honest, I was actually enjoying the production side of things. I wanted to see how the show ran after all our hard work.

First thing I learned about working the property, I was never actually going to get to see the show. Not like the audience would. I was viewing it from the side most of the time. That is when I wasn’t crawling behind the set to make the lightning effects or dealing with the sheer, amazing volume of liquid coming off the stage. It seemed like every scene they were drinking something. By the second show, I knew to have a lined trash can handy to dump everything into, in a vain effort at keeping my prop area as dry as possible.

Other than dealing with liquids and making sure every prop is where the actors expect it to be, I had about half dozen jobs during the performance. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot, but they were all very precise events. If the lightning doesn’t flash on the cue, then Abby, working the sound, can’t make the thunder. If you don’t cross the stage, before the inspector enters, you’ll be seen in your cross because the door to the manor is still standing open. When the actors flub a line or miss a cue, they always shake it off with a casual nonchalance, but when the crew messes up, it’s like you are part of a vast conspiracy to trip them up and embarrass them. Even the slightest slip, you’re going to hear about it.

And this show was cursed. We had a sick lead actress nearly passing out backstage. At one crucial point, I looked across the stage and noticed our soon-to-be, murdered, wealthy uncle was not standing in the wing awaiting his cue. After shuffling through the six-inch gap behind the back curtain (the door was open) and climbing into a spiral staircase from the very wrongest side (the set was built up against the staircase), I found him studying lines in the basement. He knew from the rod in my spine that he had fucked up! But the show’s. potential worst fuck up was mine.

Every night, the heroine of our tale was attacked offstage. A loud thump and a scream would proceed a flurry of action and concern on stage, and this effect was mine to create. “Just take the large suitcase, lift it up, and when Shannon screams, drop it.” Seemed easy enough and for the first two shows, it worked like a charm. The old suitcase was easily 9 cubic feet and filled with old clothes. It made a satisfying *whomp* every time it hit the ground. I have no idea how it played to the house, but backstage it was thunderous. Dropping the case, quickly became my favorite part, it was like I was in the show. It was my only line. Then, the third night, when the bag hit the stage, the old latches along the back gave out and lid separated completely, spilling a pile of unwanted, hand-me-downs all over the floor. Shannon’s scream was followed by a hopefully-silent, shocked inhalation, and – to its credit – my mind went immediately to work. “Okay,” I thought staring down at the shattered prop. “When does that thing need to be back on stage?”

Five minutes. Or less. At Shannon’s next entrance, she has to march out on stage WITH HER LUGGAGE and declare that she’s leaving the manor. Lucky for me, we were offstage, so no silent running was required, but it was still a mad dash of a sort, as I dropped to my knees with a tape gun and tried desperately to restore the shattered suitcase to some semblance of its former function. I got it sealed and taped shut, but when I looked around for the tape gun to add a second layer of security to my shaky, slapdash effort, the tape gun was missing! “Where is it?! I just had it! It has to be here!” All this panicked screaming was internal, of course, but in my head, I’m going mad. Shannon put a hand on my shoulder, “It’s fine. I’ll go easy with it. Relax. It’s going to be fine.” Then she hefted the flimsy repair job and marched out to face the audience.

I could do nothing but clench my teeth and stare, just waiting for the single strip of tape holding the massive case together to fail and flood the stage with my failure, but it holds. The scene concludes. No one’s the wiser. No one knows the razor’s edge a show runs along though its production. Not if the crew is doing its job. So, I watch them looking for signs of trouble, applauding thunderously in my mind when they succeed. Mustn’t disturb the show.

BTW, the tape gun was inside the suitcase.