Set the Stage

by Karis Walsh

  “Hi, I’m Emilie,” she said. Apparently the name wasn’t enough to gain admission to the house. “I’m your new roommate,” she added.

  “Oh. The actress. I’m Olivia.” She opened the door fully, then, but still blocked Emilie’s way.

  Emilie shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. And I prefer actor to actress.”

  Olivia nodded. “Gotcha. No diminutives. Come in.”

  Emilie came into the dark, narrow foyer, feeling as if she had just passed some sort of test. They walked into a living room filled with mismatched chairs and sofa and a small TV.

  “This is the common room. If you’re obsessed with a particular show, you’ll need to reserve the channel. Otherwise, the first one to get the remote gets to choose.” Olivia gestured toward an end table that had a remote on it and a clipboard with a pencil tied to it with a piece of orange yarn.

  Emilie hadn’t bothered with cable during her short stay in Medford, so she doubted she’d be fighting over television rights. She followed Olivia through a small dining room with someone’s textbooks and notebooks strewn across one quarter of it, and a partially finished jigsaw puzzle covering the rest. The picture was nothing but hundreds of candy corns, and Emilie was tempted to sit down and finish the border.

  “Here’s the kitchen,” Olivia said, continuing the tour without a puzzle break. “You can use anything in the cabinets, but we each buy our own food. This is your cupboard, and you get the bottom shelf of the fridge.”

  The kitchen was sorely in need of an update and probably hadn’t been renovated since the seventies. Everything was clean, though, from the laminated yellow countertops to the cream-colored cabinet doors. Olivia opened one of them, and then the fridge, and Emilie saw her name clearly printed on labels, marking her grocery territory.

  “Everyone’s responsible for cleaning up after themselves. No dirty dishes in the sink, and no stealing food. Seriously. If Steph finds so much as a tub of yogurt missing, she’ll turn psychotic. That’s how we lost our last roommate.”

  Lost her. Emilie wasn’t sure if Olivia meant she had moved out, or if this Steph person had psychotically killed her. Was she buried in the backyard, with nothing but an empty container of blueberry yogurt marking her grave?

  “Your room is on the first floor. The bathroom down here is for guests, too, but mostly you’ll have it for yourself. You’re right in here.”

  Emilie paused as they passed the back door and got a peek at an overgrown yard with spindly, climbing plants covering the faded wood fence. A few chairs were scattered around a small brick patio, and the area looked pleasant and private enough. She continued on and joined Olivia at the door to her room.

  She walked inside and set down her overnight bag. It was a square room with nothing more than a bed in it, but it was big enough for the bits of furniture she had bought in Medford. It would do.

  “This will be nice,” she said to Olivia.

  Olivia shrugged. “It’s a good place to live. We’re all busy with classes, and Mary is working on her thesis, so we’re usually quiet. Steph throws an occasional party on the weekend, and you’ve got a standing invite, but other than that we focus on school.” She paused, as if appraising Emilie. “We weren’t sure about having an actor join us,” she said, drawing out the word actor with a haughty accent and a smile to let Emilie know she was teasing. “But I convinced the others to give you a shot.”

  Emilie grinned. “Well, thank you. I won’t let you down.”

  “I’m sure you won’t. And maybe you can repay the favor someday.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” Olivia said with a smug expression, and Emilie wondered what trap she had just walked into. “I’m working on my master’s in psychology. Maybe you can let me interview you for a project I’m working on for one of my courses.”

  Emilie gestured around the bare room. “Is this where you usually keep your lab rats?”

  “Only the ones who don’t steal yogurt. The thieves have to live in cages in the lab.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when I’m scampering through the house looking for a midnight snack. What’s the topic?”

  “I’m doing a study on people who pursue acting careers as a way to compensate for low self-esteem and a lack of security in childhood.”

  Emilie had to laugh. “That should make you popular here in Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.”

  Olivia just smiled. “Your key is on the kitchen counter. Do you need help moving your stuff?”

  Emilie shook her head. “No, I have to get to a meeting, so I’ll do it later. Besides, if you do me another favor, you might expect the chance to dissect my brain as repayment.”

  “We’ll start with the interview and worry about dissection later. Nice to meet you, Emilie.”

  “You, too.”

  As soon as Olivia left the room, Emilie shut the door and changed into a green shirt and a pair of black pants, with a thick black jacket over the top. She was tempted to flop on the bed and let her mind process all the changes and newness she was facing, but she didn’t have time. She couldn’t be late for her appointment. She grabbed her new key, checked herself in the mirror as she walked past the small bathroom, and left the house. She could easily walk the short distance from home to the theaters, but not today, when a light rain was starting to dot the sidewalk and she didn’t dare make a bad first impression by being late. She got in her car and drove instead.

  For all its grandeur and its prominence in Ashland, the main theater space wasn’t immediately visible from the main street. It was tucked on a side street, bordering the park, and gave the feeling of being somehow separate from the rest of the world. A brick courtyard and a high, dark brown fence surrounded the huge, open-air Allen Elizabethan Theatre, and the gift shop, administrative offices, and Angus Bowmer Theatre were clustered around this area that was aptly called the Bricks. Across the street was the smaller Thomas Theatre, where Emilie had auditioned last September, reciting her monologues amid the set pieces of ship and palm trees for the evening’s performance of The Tempest. She managed to find enough room to parallel park her Subaru-plus-U-Haul along the street, but she knew this would be an impossibility once the season started.

  She went into Carpenter Hall, where the sales office was already a hive of activity, and asked how to get to the artistic director’s office. She was sent down a long corridor, the thick maroon carpet giving this part of the hall a hushed feeling, especially compared to the loud and active tiled sales space. Jay Winder’s door was open, and he was sitting at his desk surrounded by head shots, stacks of scripts, and an overflowing box of fabric samples. She stood in the doorway and knocked.

  “Come in, come in,” he said, gesturing her forward without looking up from whatever he was furiously writing in a thick notebook. He held his hand out, palm toward her, and she assumed he meant he’d be with her as soon as he was done spilling his thoughts onto the paper. She sat in an ornately carved chair upholstered in a heavy brocade and waited for him to finish.

  She had met him when she auditioned, and had liked him immediately. He had a palpable sense of energy about him, and an infectious enthusiasm for the festival and the plays they produced. She had auditioned for several roles in plays across the country, but only here for a place in a multi-play company, and she had received a few offers for her efforts. After meeting Jay—and comparing him to the somewhat blasé directors in the other theaters—she had quickly made her choice.

  She knew he was in his late sixties, but his fashionably styled and highlighted hair as well as his mobile and active demeanor made him seem ageless. He was wearing a long-sleeved powder-blue polo shirt and faded jeans, and after every few words he wrote, he paused and tapped his fingers restlessly on the desk. Finally he turned his attention to her with a suddenness that made her startle.

  “Emilie Danvers. Great to see you again. Have you settled in? See Bennie in the sales office if you need a place to stay. He can get you
a room somewhere. You’ve got your scripts? Good. Rehearsals start next week for the openers, and not until March for the summer plays. Let’s see, I just had your packets here a minute ago…”

  Emilie had barely lowered her handful of scripts—which she had held up in answer to his question about them—before he was tossing stuffed manila envelopes at her while he rattled off her parts.

  “Titania, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, February to November. Understudy Cassella, Skywriting, February to July. Have you read the book? Sidman did the script, too, but you should read the words he originally wrote.” He paused and rooted around on his desk until he found a three-inch-thick trade paperback of the bestselling book Skywriting. She caught it when he lobbed it in her direction, but the two envelopes she already had in her lap slid to the floor.

  “Anne Page, The Merry Wives of Windsor, February to November. Lady Anne, Richard III, April to October.” He laughed. “Two Annes! Try not to forget which one you’re playing. What a disaster to get them mixed up.”

  Jesus. For all the potential catastrophes Emilie’s too-active imagination had been concocting, that particular one had escaped her. Until now. Surely she’d remember whether she was playing a virginal teenager or a widow who was being courted by her husband’s killer, wouldn’t she? She shoved the new fear out of her mind and caught the next envelope.

  “Martha, Toxic, July to August. Those are the main parts, but it’s not uncommon for others to come up midseason. You’ll have your rehearsal and performance schedules in the folders, as well as an updated script for each play. Any changes made from the earlier ones will be marked in red. You also have appointments for costume and wig measurements this week, and those departments will let you know when to come back for fittings. Needless to say, get these on your calendar and don’t miss any of them.”

  “Of course. I mean, I won’t,” Emilie said, but he had already moved on to another topic.

  “All members of the company do a minimum number of tours throughout the season, but if you want extra ones, let me know, and I’ll add your name to the on-call list. It’s a great way to make more money, and to feel like you’re part of the festival. We don’t want actors who say their lines and go home. We want company members who become part of the OSF family.”

  Emilie nodded, not so much at his last statement as at the making money part. The rare times when she had been in one place long enough to work in Europe, she had found jobs as a tour guide. She enjoyed doing them, with the set scripts, the chance to embellish with personal anecdotes, and the absence of the debilitating stage fright she felt when acting. Tours offered the joy of performing without the anxiety of being responsible for bringing someone’s words and ideas to life.

  She decided not to share all of this with Olivia. She wasn’t prepared to have her mind and motives studied right now.

  “I’m happy to be involved any way I can,” she said.

  “Good. You were stellar in your auditions, and you have a wide range of parts to cover this season. Show us what you’re made of, Emilie.”

  Yeah, no pressure there. Emilie stood when he did, and shook the hand he offered. She resisted the urge to shake some feeling back into her fingers when he let go.

  “The keyword here is communication. Schedules, fittings, performance notes. We communicate our expectations, and you communicate if you have any questions, concerns, or personal issues that might get in the way of your ability to perform at your peak. I’ll be dropping by rehearsals over the next few weeks, so I’ll see you soon.”

  Emilie thanked him and bent down to pick up the material he had given her. When she left with her armload of scripts and schedules clutched to her chest, he was already back at his desk, writing again.

  She walked to her car and stowed what would be her life for the next eleven months in the trunk. He had talked about communication but hadn’t given her long enough to take a breath and ask a question. He probably wouldn’t have liked any of the ones coming to her mind. What the hell am I doing here? Why did I agree to play four characters and understudy a fifth instead of taking a nice, easy bit part in a civic playhouse somewhere farther out of the spotlight? How exactly do I get out of this contract without needing to repay the advance that I already spent?

  Emilie got in her car and sat behind the wheel for a few minutes. She could go back to her new house and work on the puzzle. Go shopping so she wouldn’t need to steal anyone else’s dairy products. Instead, she got out of the car again and locked it before crossing the Bricks and going past the Elizabethan theater. She hadn’t even seen inside the theater, except in pictures, and it would be the site of her very first performance here. Would she be a success or a failure? Or, possibly even more horrifying, just okay? She walked down a flight of brick steps and toward the park. Maybe a walk through the bone-chilling rain would clear her head and get her ready for what lay ahead.

  Chapter Four

  Arden leaned her elbows on the stone railing of the Atkinson Bridge and watched Ashland Creek rushing beneath her. The small river was swift and deep, already swelling from runoff from the melting snow in the nearby mountains. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping to find while staring at the water, but some inspiration would be welcome.

  She had spent two weeks avoiding Jacob because she still didn’t have any idea what he expected from her. She took good care of the plants and trees in her park, and she loved her job for its simplicity and the satisfaction she felt when everything was healthy and in full bloom. Why did he need her to do more than she did?

  Luckily, they had a few inches of snow a week ago, and the entire crew had been kept busy clearing paths, breaking ice off branches and limbs, and making sure the more delicate shrubs and bushes were still heavily mulched. Basic care took precedence over innovation.

  But now the weather had warmed a few degrees. Heavy rains had melted the snow practically overnight, and the sun had even made a rare appearance this morning. For all of five minutes. Arden had gotten jumpy again, expecting Jacob to appear at any moment and demand some sort of signature showpiece from her.

  Arden sighed and pushed herself upright, crossing to the theater side of the park and climbing a hill that led to a little-used jogging and bike trail. She remembered when those labyrinth circles were popular. Did people still walk around them and pretend they were meditating? She wasn’t sure where they would be able to fit one, but the flat surface of the tennis courts came to mind. She could suggest they spray paint one there. Or maybe Jacob would prefer a gnome garden near the first duck pond? They could dress the small statues in period costumes and pretend they were performing one of Shakespeare’s plays. Macbeth, starring gnomes. Or maybe they could plant a corn maze and charge admission for tourists to try to find their way out again.

  Arden counted chain link panels in the fence until she came to the fifth one from the trailhead. She reached behind the metal post and made sure the tiny magnetic box was still in place. The park was full of geocaches, and even though it wasn’t part of her job, she checked them regularly. During the season, she’d often see plenty of people wandering through the park, staring at their phones not because they were texting or searching online, but because they were following GPS coordinates and trying to find the hidden caches.

  She was about to head back to the main trail when she heard a woman’s voice coming from somewhere ahead of her. The sound was too faint for her to pick out any words, and she walked quietly toward the source. Probably a couple of teens making out behind some bushes and needing to be shooed out of the park.

  She recognized the lines from a play as soon as she was able to hear a complete sentence. She wasn’t hearing amorous high-schoolers, but a fairy queen. Titania, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play was one of her favorites, probably because it was the first one her grandparents took her to see. She had only been six at the time, but they had talked to her about the language and story for several weeks before the play opened, so by the time she saw the performance
she was able to understand most of what she was watching. Even if her theater-loving family hadn’t prepped her, though, she would have been carried away to a magical forest that night.

  She paused for a moment, uncertain whether she should continue eavesdropping or walk away and let the actor practice in peace. She closed her eyes and let the words move through her. The woman’s voice was soft, but powerful. Haughty, yet playful. She was speaking quietly, but her voice carried with a resonance that made Arden assume she was a professional, one of the company members most likely.

  Arden couldn’t make herself leave but instead was pulled toward the woman. She crept to the edge of the path and peered around a heavy oak tree trunk and into a small clearing where the speaker was standing on a tree trunk stage, about two feet across and a foot high. She was facing away at an angle, and Arden stared at her profile. Here we go again, she thought. The woman had an elegance about her, a queenly grace befitting the role she was practicing, even though she was dressed in modern, businesslike clothes. Her look was softened by gorgeous blue-green eyes and by the thick blond curls that had pulled loose from her braid and were now framing her face and matching the curve of her cheekbones. She was beautiful, and Arden felt herself falling, heading toward a new infatuation and the inevitable end-of-the-season crash.

  Normally, Arden would be ready to step out of hiding right now. Turn on the charm, ask her out, rush into the relationship—such as it would be—as quickly as possible. Before common sense had a chance to make a case against another ill-advised tryst with an actor. This time, though, she wasn’t in a hurry to break the spell the woman was casting around her tiny stage.

  Once Arden stopped her own internal monologue about the should I or shouldn’t I ask her out debate, she stopped feeling like an observer and had the sensation of being drawn out of the park and into a different place altogether. She rested her hand on the rough bark of the trunk and just listened. When Titania called for her attendants to come forward, Arden took a step before she could stop herself.