by Allen Zadoff
I look behind me at the front doors of the theater. I should be able to see a faint glow along the crack beneath the door. There’s nothing. The hall lights are out, too.
“We have to evacuate the theater,” Ignacio says.
“No!” Derek says. “My father is out there!”
The audience is talking now, some of them getting up to find their way out of the theater by the light of their cell phones. They make it halfway up the aisle and get stuck. A couple of kids are crying. An audience member shouts at the stage: “What’s going on!”
Chaos is about to erupt. It could be bad, even dangerous.
“You’re a techie. Do something!” I hear Derek say on the headphones, followed by the chatter of techie voices backstage.
It’s a disaster.
There’s no light, and now there’s no show.
I look for Dad’s image in the darkness, but he’s gone.
QUICK BRIGHT THINGS.
I pull a glow stick from my pocket, bend it until it cracks, and shake it hard.
I remember one time Dad and I went out into the woods at night, and he cut open a glow stick and shook it onto a tree. Dad wanted me to see how the chemicals still glowed outside the tube. He used them like paint, transforming the dark woods into a green speckled abstract.
The woods.
Most of Midsummer takes place in the woods.
I have an idea. I could cut open glow sticks and sprinkle them on the fairies. I imagine them moving across the stage like they’re walking through the woods at night, seen and not seen.
That image is followed by another: flashlight beams crossing the woods at night. You turn the beam on someone’s face, and you’re expecting it to be one person, but it’s someone else. Maybe the person was your friend, but now they’re your enemy. Or the person you thought loved you is gone forever, replaced by a stranger.
Something clicks for me, something essential about the meaning of the play.
It’s so confusing in the woods at night, you can’t be sure if you’re awake or dreaming.
That idea triggers a rush of images, ways I can light the show. All of them use stuff we have backstage. None of it has to be plugged in.
The audience is calling out now, shouting at the stage, demanding to know what’s going on. Most people have turned on their phones. I see faces glowing blue in the darkness.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please stay calm,” Ignacio says. He stumbles onstage with an electric lantern, waving his hand to help disperse the fog.
A lantern. I could use a lantern, too.
“Can I have your attention, please,” Ignacio says. “We’ve had a power outage. I’m sorry but we have to cancel the show—”
I need to do something. I can’t let it end like this.
I tuck the glow stick in the collar of my shirt and navigate to the ladder at the edge of the catwalk. I look into the darkness below.
I take a deep breath, and I climb.
Ignacio says, “For your own safety, we ask you to remain in your seats until we can get some lights up. Then we’ll lead you out of the theater.”
The audience groans.
“Hail, Mortals!” I shout from the middle of the ladder.
The audience turns in their seats to see who’s talking.
I flip on the flashlight beam.
“What are you doing, Z?” Ignacio calls to me from the stage.
The audience chuckles uncomfortably, not understanding what’s going on.
I use the big Mag like a spotlight, swinging it from one face to another until I have the audience’s attention. The light hits my mom, her mouth frozen in amazement.
I navigate down the center aisle and hop onstage, walking past Ignacio.
I mash a couple of Shakespeare’s lines together: “And now from depths of darkest night / Through the house give gathering light!”
And I hand the Maglite to Summer.
“You look like you could use a light,” I say.
“Thank you,” Summer says.
The audience laughs.
“What do I do with this?” she whispers.
“Use it as part of the scene.”
“You want me to improvise Shakespeare?”
“You texted me Shakespeare.”
“That was different.”
“You can do it,” I say.
“How do you know?”
She bites at her lip with her front tooth, just like she did that night at my house. She thinks hard for a second, and then her face relaxes.
“I’ll try it,” she says. She points the light at different places around the stage.
“’Tis dark in the forest,” she says. “Methinks a girl could get lost out here.”
“Hey, what about a light for me?” Wesley says.
“Ah yes, m’lord,” I say.
I take out a penlight and hand it to him.
He looks down at the tiny light, and the audience howls with laughter.
“Crewus technicalis! We need more light!” I shout, and I wave my glow stick towards the wings, signaling Reach.
I take the lantern away from Ignacio and place it on the front lip of the stage so the actors know where the edge is.
“You can’t do this,” Ignacio says.
“Do you have a better idea?” I say.
He glances at the audience, embarrassed.
“You have to talk to Derek,” he whispers. “Chain of command.”
He stamps his way offstage, tripping on a ramp and nearly going down.
I hear a noise from offstage. Reach rushes out from the wings with an armful of flashlights.
“Crewus technicalis at your service,” he says with a bow.
The audience laughs again.
“Thank God,” I whisper.
“I’m doing it for the show,” he says. “Not for you.”
“For the show,” I say. “That’s reason enough.”
We pass the flashlights out to the actors.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” Johanna whispers.
“Start the lines,” I say. “Don’t move around a lot. Stay together and use the flashlights to help you.”
“This is crazy,” Wesley says.
“Let’s try it,” Summer says. “It’s like an improv exercise.”
She steps forward, turns the light up towards her face, and says:
SUMMER
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.
And the play begins again.
BEHIND UNSEEN.
I walk backstage into chaos. Derek is yelling at the techies, the actors clumped around him. He whirls around when he sees me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Derek says.
“I’m trying to save the show.”
“It’s not your show to save.”
“I have an idea,” I say.
“Can you get the lights back on?” he says.
“I don’t think so, but I can—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Derek says.
“I want to hear it,” Mr. Apple says.
Everyone turns.
Mr. Apple is standing in the door of the cave with colored glow bracelets strung around his neck and arms. He looks like a Mardi Gras float.
“Mr. Apple. Have you been here all along?” Derek says.
Mr. Apple shrugs.
“I wanted to see the show,” he says. “I couldn’t stay away.”
“We had some kind of technical glitch,” Derek says. “I don’t know what happened, but I believe the techies are responsible.”
“Now is not the time for blame,” Mr. Apple says. “Now is the time for inspiration.”
Mr. Apple looks from Derek back to me.
“What do you think, Mr. Ziegler?”
Derek sneers at me.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You knew enough to come down that ladder and get the show started again,” Mr. Appl
e says. “What happens next?”
“Nothing happens next,” Derek says. “We call the fire department to evacuate, and we reschedule the opening until everything is fixed and we can do the play the way it’s supposed to be done. Fully designed.”
“Mr. Ziegler?” Mr. Apple says.
Everyone is watching me. The techies and actors, Derek and Ignacio.
I should keep quiet, let Derek do whatever he wants.
But that’s how I always do it.
I look towards Reach, and he gives me the tiniest nod. It’s dark, so I can’t be sure it happened. Then he does it again. Really subtle, so nobody but me can see.
Go for it.
And I do. I lean in towards Mr. Apple and I try to describe the play I have in my head.
“I think we should sprinkle glow sticks on the fairies,” I say. “And Puck should have a miner’s helmet. And we can use flashlights in the forest scenes. And we can give the actors glow bracelets like you’re wearing, Mr. Apple.”
I’m waiting for Apple to shoot me down, but he doesn’t. He lets me get it all out.
I finish and there’s silence. People are looking at me, but I can’t tell what they’re thinking, whether I’ve made an idiot out of myself or not.
“See what I mean?” Derek says. “Ridiculous ideas.”
“Do it,” Mr. Apple says to me.
“What do you mean, do it? What about the fire code?” Derek says.
“Mr. Dunkirk, I’d like to speak to you alone please.”
Mr. Apple puts a hand on Derek’s shoulder and leads him away.
I turn to the techies.
“Grace, get all the actors into the Cave. That will be our base of operations. Benno, collect the emergency flashlights from the classrooms. Half Crack, get the carton of glow sticks from the back shelf in wardrobe. What else do we have that makes light?”
“I’ve got lanterns in the props room,” Reach says.
I snap a glow stick and hand it to him.
“Grab whatever you can,” I say. “Lay a path from backstage onto the stage so the actors can find their way. Meet back in five minutes.”
“I’m proud of you,” he says.
“This could be a disaster,” I say.
“Whatever happens,” he says, “you stood up.”
And he rushes into the darkness.
THE STORY SHALL BE CHANGED.
It’s too dangerous for the actors to go onto the set pieces, so scene after scene plays out on the few feet of stage floor in front of the set. Every design element that Derek built—all the ladders, pulleys, ramps, and staircases—has to be abandoned. The production is stripped down to nothing but actors and light.
The techies work together backstage keeping the pathways clear, leading actors in and out of the Cave, then walking them onstage so nobody gets hurt.
Mr. Apple and I stand together in the wings making decisions about everything. We decide the fairies should have glow sticks, the humans flashlights, and the actors—Shakespeare calls them mechanicals—glow bracelets and a bunch of lanterns. We give one of the actors a big emergency light, and he uses it like a spotlight on the mechanicals during their rehearsal scenes.
The audience barely stirs during most of the show. They laugh from time to time, which is a good sign, but I can’t tell if they’re laughing at us or with us. And most of the time it’s so quiet I don’t know if they’re awake or asleep.
The night goes by in a blur, bodies moving in the darkness, actors’ faces seen in the beams of the techies’ flashlights.
Summer passes me a dozen or more times during the night, but we don’t speak again.
I keep hoping she might say something to break the ice, but she never does.
At one point near the end of the show, Johanna finds me backstage.
“Adam, what do you think if Wesley and Peter steal my flashlight in this scene? They’re not in love with me anymore, so maybe they just grab it and give it to Summer.”
I’m so startled she’s talking to me, I don’t answer.
“Is it a terrible idea?” she says.
“No, it’s a great idea. It’s funny,” I say.
“Do you think so?”
“Sure. And at the end of the play when things are back to normal, they can return it to you.”
“That’s great!” she says, and gives me a big smile.
“You’re so nice. Why didn’t I know this?”
“Because you’re always with Reach when you see me. And I’m a bitch when I’m around him.”
“But why?”
“You don’t know?” she says. “You two are such good friends, I just assumed—”
I shrug.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” she says. “He asked me out.”
“He did not,” I say.
“Like a hundred times. I told him I wasn’t interested, but he kept sending me cards, notes, even a Vermont Teddy Bear.”
“No way,” I say.
“The fifteen-inch Chic Shopper Bear. He sewed his name onto its shirt and built a tiny prop Macy’s bag because he knows that’s my favorite store.”
“Holy crap. That does sound like Reach.”
“When he wouldn’t back off, I had to be mean until he got the message.”
Ignacio interrupts us.
“Cue coming up,” he whispers.
“So that’s the story,” she says to me. “Sorry I’ve been flaming you all year.”
“What about the stuff you said a few days ago? Did you really think I sabotaged the show?”
“Honestly? I wasn’t sure.”
“What do you think now?”
“Now it’s obvious,” she says.
“We need you onstage,” Ignacio says to her.
“What’s obvious?” I say.
“You didn’t sabotage it. You saved it.”
She gives me a quick hug and heads onstage for her scene.
Mr. Apple beckons to me from the Cave.
“I want to give everyone candles for the last scene,” he says. “What do you think?”
I imagine the wedding ceremony playing out in candlelight.
“I like it,” I say.
“Make it happen,” Mr. Apple says.
I grab a bag of tea light candles. Grace, Reach, and I pass out paper plates to put under them so the actors won’t burn their hands. Before I know it, we’ve sent twenty-five actors onstage in a long candlelit procession humming “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story.
Hubbard, the actor who plays Puck, is last in line. Mr. Apple holds onto her elbow, whispering instructions into her ear. Then he sends her onstage, too.
I turn towards the Cave to make sure we didn’t forget anyone, and Derek is there.
“Well played,” he says. “This whole evening. Bravo.”
“I tried to save the show,” I say.
“You did,” Derek says. “Tonight you are a hero.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“But everything we talked about for next year? Forget it. You’ll never get near another light, not as long as I have anything to say about it. And I’m going to have a lot to say, at least according to Mr. Apple. He offered me my own show next year. Can you believe that? Direct and design on the big stage. Recompense for my covering his ass when he freaked out.”
“You’re going to direct a whole show?” I say.
“A musical,” Derek says. “Maybe my production of Wicked will finally come to fruition. We shall see.”
“Congratulations,” I say.
“Thank you so much,” he says with a smile. “So enjoy your night, Z. It’s a big one for you. Your first lighting design … and your last.”
Mr. Apple appears with a flashlight in hand.
“Come on, lad,” he says to me. “I want you to see this.”
He walks me to the wings. I glance back at Derek. I see him grinning at me, his teeth ghostly white in the darkness.
Mr. Apple positions us so we have a view of the stage.
“Watch this,” Mr. Apple says.
The final speech in the play belongs to Puck. Mr. Apple has directed it so the entire cast is onstage, all of them frozen except Puck. Puck comes forward to speak to the audience.
HUBBARD
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended …
I never paid attention to the ending much before, but listening to it now makes me angry. It seems like Shakespeare’s big apology. He writes a whole play about how you can’t trust love, and then at the end he chickens out and ties up the loose ends.
HUBBARD
You have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
I’m not opposed to a happy ending, but how realistic is that? Shakespeare sends Puck out to say, Sorry if I scared you. Maybe it was all a dream.
If I believe that, then maybe I believe my life is a dream. I didn’t almost get Summer and lose her, Reach isn’t mad at me, and Grace’s heart isn’t broken. Maybe Derek isn’t going to destroy me after the show. Maybe I’ll get offstage tonight and Dad will be there with Josh and Mom, the three of them laughing and waiting to congratulate me.
My own perfect happy ending.
“Are you watching, lad?” Mr. Apple says.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.
I look at the candles spread across the stage, flickering like a field of stars.
I look at Summer, beautiful in candlelight.
It’s a perfect moment.
Then Puck walks over to Jazmin—and blows out her candle.
Puck blows out Johanna’s. And Wesley’s. She continues down the line, blowing out the candles one by one.
This is what Mr. Apple wanted me to see. The fairies are supposed to bless everyone at the end of the play. But Puck is doing the opposite. She’s extinguishing each flame.
Mr. Apple has shifted the entire meaning of the play. It’s not a story about a world that went wrong for a time then returned to normal. It’s more complex than that. Things happen, and who knows why? We have to find a way to deal with it.
I look back at Mr. Apple, and he throws me a wink.