by Robin Talley
“HOLD!” I shout again. “Clear the stage!”
David, who’s the only person on the stage just now, swings toward the wing as fast as his crutches will carry him. It’s a good thing he’s gotten plenty of practice at that this week. The orchestra stops playing mid-note, and a hush falls over the theater.
My heart thuds as I sink back into my seat. I’ve never had to use the God Mic with an audience in the auditorium before. But then, I’ve never seen anything like this happen.
Below me, the hush evaporates and the house begins to buzz with dozens, then hundreds, of preteen voices. Some of the middle schoolers sound alarmed, but most just seem amused. They wouldn’t be if they knew what actually just happened.
In this scene, a 150-pound bridge is supposed to float gently down from far above the stage to upstage center, courtesy of several sturdy cables connected to the fly system. But at this moment, that bridge appears to be literally flying in midair. A cable snapped when it was halfway down from the rigging and now the neatly repainted white bridge is spinning slowly over the stage, where it’s in legitimate danger of crashing down. Fifteen feet above where David’s head just was.
Clearly, it doesn’t matter how much I give up. The stupid curse still won’t let go.
“Shit!” Bryce bellows into my headset. “I’m so sorry! We had to reset the bridge after yesterday’s dress and it got all screwed up!”
“Ms. Teitelbaum and I are heading to the catwalk, Mel.” Will sounds astonishingly calm considering that only through the grace of God and the other three cables is David not dead.
“Thank you, catwalk,” I say, because I’m not sure what the protocol is for an SM responding to the news that a couple of crew members are heading out onto the narrow stretch of wire fifty feet above the stage to rein in a flying piece of scenery. All I know is, when you need to register that you heard something, you start by saying “Thank you.”
“All right, everybody!” David calls from below. The body mic taped to his cheek makes his voice echo around the auditorium. He cleared the stage, as instructed, but instead of going backstage like I meant for him to do, he’s climbed down the stairs to the house—on his crutches, no less—and now he’s swinging his way slowly up the right aisle. He’s in his full last-minute Javert costume, with the braided jacket and the ridiculous triangular hat Rachel just finished making this morning, not to mention the layers of caked-on makeup and the powdered gray ponytail that are supposed to make him look old and sallow. He’s got a tall brown leather boot on one foot and a thick white cast on the other that his doctor forbade us to cover up.
But he’s smiling in a way Javert never would. All sunny and devious, like he’s plotting something that amuses him a lot.
“Looks like we’ve got some time to kill,” David calls out to the audience of middle schoolers, “so . . .”
We absolutely do not have time to kill. We need Will and Bryce and any other human who knows how to handle rigging to immediately fix the problem with the bridge before it takes out the entire stage. I want desperately to go up there myself and help, but an SM can never leave the booth.
Besides, the very second the hazard is cleared, we need to get on with the IDR. The school day’s almost over. If the final bell rings while our characters are still dying, the middle school kids will start stampeding for the doors en masse, and the actors will be singing their grand finale to a bunch of retreating backpacks. As if cast morale isn’t already bad enough.
This entire rehearsal has been a disaster. Everything’s been a disaster for more than a week. With Gabby gone, it feels like my arm’s been cut off. All the other crew heads and assistants are slammed, so I wound up promoting Michael Coken from the set crew to serve as a temporary ASM. He’s trying hard, hovering backstage with Gabby’s old headset, waiting for things to go wrong so he can anxiously report them to me and wait for my instructions on how to handle them. But he’s no Gabby, and we’ve already had to deal with more nightmares today than I’ve ever encountered in a single rehearsal. The battery on Nick’s mic inexplicably died in act one, and we had to switch it out with Lauren’s while Nena raced to the scene shop for batteries. The new cart Dad built got stuck when the run crew was wheeling it onstage, and Jasmin had to run the fake strobe light twice while they struggled to unstick it. The actors keep tripping getting on and off the turntable, despite the fact that we’ve practiced every single entrance and exit dozens of times already. And now, we’ve got set pieces falling from the sky.
It’s obvious we’re all in way over our heads.
But right now, the middle schoolers couldn’t care less. They’re all leaning eagerly toward David. Audiences love it when something goes wrong onstage, and they love it even more when actors break the fourth wall. None of these kids has the slightest idea how close we are to a major disaster, because when you walk into a room with a stage, you leave fear and normalcy and risk outside. The magic of theater. Unless you’re on the crew.
Will and Bryce have reached the catwalk now. I watch anxiously as they tromp back and forth fifty feet over David’s head.
“What do you say we mix things up a little?” David calls, and that’s enough to make the crowd cheer.
David starts clapping, too, but in that actor way—the one that makes everyone in earshot want to play along with whatever he’s doing. He claps out a beat, and the kids quickly start clapping in time.
Then David opens his mouth and starts belting out “If I Were a Rich Man.”
“He isn’t.” Jasmin’s jaw drops beside me.
“Oh, he is.” I’ve already registered it and moved on. My focus is still locked on the catwalk and making sure nothing else comes crashing down. But Jasmin starts laughing.
When we did Fiddler on the Roof two years ago, David was Tevye. Now he’s singing his showstopping Fiddler solo while dressed as an ultra-serious French police inspector who’s supposed to be jumping off a bridge to his death at this very moment. And who happens to be doing it all on crutches.
The audience adores it, obviously.
The feet on the catwalk have slowed down. A moment later, the bridge gradually begins climbing back into the rigging. The sight of it moving up instead of down elicits a new chorus of scattered laughter from the kids, but David never stops singing.
Will’s voice sounds in my ear. “Ms. McIntyre, I think we’ve got it. Just testing now.”
“Thank you, testing,” I say, but I’m not ready to believe any problem is actually fixed on this show until I see it for myself.
The bridge starts coming down again as David enters the next verse. They’re moving it extra slowly, but the cables hold. David glances up, and I can tell he knows it’s time to wind down.
“Everybody now!” he shouts, launching into the chorus one more time. The kids sing along and on the second line a piano joins in, making everyone laugh even harder. In the orchestra pit, Dr. Benjamin is cheerfully conducting while the pianist plays, and that’s when I finally allow myself a second of laughter. If our straitlaced band teacher thinks it’s okay to joke around, the crisis might really be over.
“Ready on flies, Mel.” Bryce sounds breathless over the headset. “I’m so, so, so, so sorry.”
“Thank you, flies. Mr. Green, can you confirm?”
“Yes, we’re ready. You can give the G-O.”
“Stand by, Michael, to signal Dr. Benjamin,” I say just as David leads the audience into the last line of “If I Were a Rich Man.”
“Thank you, uh, Michael,” Michael says into the headset, panting as he runs down to the pit.
“Go!”
Michael must’ve given the signal successfully, because the piano switches seamlessly into the opening notes of “Javert’s Suicide.” In the pause before the full orchestra joins in, David does a mini bow over his crutches. It looks painful, but he smiles anyway.
“Farewell, Anatevka. And now, back to Paris!” He slowly climbs up to the stage, and I can see him putting Javert back on as th
e orchestra comes in. His steps are slower and heavier when he reaches the top of the stairs, and his movements are labored as he takes his place stage right, dragging one of his crutches behind him with tragic flair.
I brace myself for more problems, but the rest of the scene is astonishingly smooth. David picks up where Javert’s song left off, and he manages to draw the audience back in right away. When the bridge finally comes down, exactly the way it should, the mood is so appropriately somber that not a single audience member laughs.
We had to modify the end of this scene during the nightmare that was tech weekend. The original plan had been for David to jump through the trapdoor, but that obviously wouldn’t be safe now that he’s got crutches and a cast to deal with. So now, David stares down mutely into a patch of lighting-effect-created water, somehow managing to convey the idea that he’s about to jump without moving a muscle. Then Jasmin cuts to a blackout and the bridge flies back up, just like it’s supposed to, and the audience gasps, just like they’re supposed to.
How is this possible? When so many things have gone wrong, how does this show still make people feel so much?
Nothing major goes wrong for the next couple of songs, and the audience seems just as caught up in the story as they were before our bridge disaster. At yesterday’s dress rehearsal we had a near-injury during the wedding dance sequence—Imani tripped over a skirt we hadn’t hemmed short enough—but today everyone manages to stay on their feet. As the epilogue starts, it occurs to me that we might actually get the audience out of here before the bell.
“Stand by, light sixty-two,” I say.
Jasmin nods and hovers her finger over the key without looking my way. We’ve been working together without any major issues, but we’ve made almost zero eye contact all week. It’s obvious she still feels like I betrayed her. Which is fair, since that’s exactly what I did.
Not everyone on the crew is being so professional, though. Most of them are still doing their jobs the way they always have, but I can hear the resentment in their voices over the headset when I give instructions. And all through tech, I got angry looks and eye rolls from the run crew. I wound up eating lunch in the booth both days so I wouldn’t have to see all those judgmental faces turned my way.
“Lights, go,” I say.
Nick steps onto the stage and slumps onto his death bench. Thanks to Jasmin, the special beams down perfectly, but Nick’s sitting just to the right of where he should, so his face is half in the dark. Typical. A lot of actors have trouble finding their light, but Nick the Dick is especially bad at it.
I haven’t spoken to him since the pep rally, and I’m hoping to get away without ever having to talk to him again for the rest of the show. Ideally, the rest of my life. His singing today has been all right, though.
“Stand by, light sixty-three . . . lights, go.”
The spotlight comes on as Odile steps out, dressed all in white. I order myself not to react, but it doesn’t work. It never does. The only time I see her now is when she’s onstage, and every time I watch her enter, I nearly start crying all over again.
It’s no surprise we keep having crises. Breaking up with her made me miserable, but it didn’t make me any less in love.
The spotlight follows Odile as she glides across the stage and sings her first line, laying a gentle hand on Nick’s shoulder. Somehow, she sounds better, clearer, than she ever has, and even though she’s singing with Nick, her voice is so pure I forget she’s acting. All I see is her, surrounded by a perfect halo of light. There’s so much weight in her voice, so much feeling, I want to crumble into sawdust.
I can’t believe I let her go.
“Stand by, light sixty-four.” I swallow, trying to squeeze the tremor out of my voice. I can feel Jasmin’s eyes on me, and I summon my Stage Manager Calm with all the strength I have left. “Lights, go.”
The stage brightens, but my eyes are still fixed on Odile. The calm won’t come. I swallow again. “Stand by, light sixty-five.”
Somehow I hold it together through the curtain call, and the actors are taking their final bows to raucous applause just as the bell rings. The middle schoolers jump up and all try to leave at once, so I get on the walkie-talkie and tell the house manager to expect some chaos.
Jasmin shuts down the light board. There’s nothing else for us to do in the booth, since the sound team is working from their table in the house. Kevin recovered from the stomach flu, thank God, but he’s just as pissed at me as the rest of the crew, so it’s probably a good thing that he isn’t sitting up here with us.
“See you backstage,” Jasmin says, nodding at me without meeting my eyes.
I nod back, rubbing my forehead as she leaves. This was scheduled to be an afternoon off, our first in weeks, but instead the whole crew is meeting for another last-minute costume workshop. There are still dresses and pants and prisoner jackets that need hemming.
“Ms. McIntyre?” Behind me, Will steps through the open booth door. He isn’t smiling. “I’ve got an update on the rigging.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“We need to triple-check everything before tomorrow. Not just the bridge, either—all the pieces that fly in or out. Ms. Teitelbaum and Mr. Levy said they could stick around. Do you have any veterans on the run crew who could help?”
“Everyone’s working on costumes, but . . .” I sigh. “I’ll broadcast to the backstage and ask. And I can help, too. I’m better at flies than costumes anyway.”
“Good. It’s all hands on deck. Keep your headset on when you come back.”
Will leaves and I switch my mic to broadcast through the backstage speakers, asking for Rachel to send anyone she can spare to stage right in five minutes. Then I turn off my mic, climb to my feet, and start weaving my way through the house. The time it’ll take me to walk backstage will be the closest thing I’ll have to a break today, so I’m dragging my feet.
That’s when the murmurs in the back row catch my attention. The house manager is long gone, so it’s on me to kick the dawdlers out. I sigh and start toward them.
Until I realize one of the murmuring voices is extremely familiar.
“I know what you mean,” she’s saying softly. “You’d be surprised how common it is.”
“But . . .” Another familiar voice sniffles. Sniffles. He’s literally in tears. “I just feel so useless.”
“I understand, but the show must go on, remember?”
I’m so close it’s a miracle they haven’t seen me. But there’s no way that’s going to last—if I try to sneak away, the movement will get their attention. They’ll think I was eavesdropping on purpose.
I clear my throat, and Nick and Odile both look up at once. Her eyes widen, but Nick drops his face into his hands and slowly climbs to his feet, leaving her alone in the back row.
“You might as well tell her too,” he mutters to Odile. “I mean . . . please.”
She nods. “I will. And my offer still stands.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, so quietly I’m not sure he meant to say it out loud at all. Then he shoves his hands under his arms and stalks up the aisle toward the lobby. He’s still in costume, and his white shirt is puffed out and drenched in sweat.
“Change into your street clothes,” I call after him, because whatever else might be going on, we need that costume. “And give that shirt to Devin for the laundry.”
Nick gives me a tiny nod, and then he’s gone.
I have no choice but to turn to Odile. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since that day in the dance studio, and everything I felt watching her onstage is bubbling up inside me all over again.
I’m sure she doesn’t want me here. But I want to be here. I want to be wherever she is, always.
I fold my hands under my arms, the way Nick did. “So, um . . . was there something he wanted you to tell me?”
She tilts her head to one side, looking right at me. Making eye contact with her again after all this time feels like a
gut punch. “Careful. Someone could see us talking.”
The words hurt, but even so, I glance around the auditorium. Most of the cast is gone—probably in the lower-level dressing rooms, or, more likely, already on their way home, since for them this is actually a free afternoon—and only a few members of the run crew are onstage, resetting it for tomorrow. The others are probably back in the makeshift costume area.
“Ms. McIntyre?” Will’s voice sounds in my headset. “We’re holding on flies. I need to sand this piece down first. I told the others to go back to help Ms. Scott with costumes, but if you could stick around, that would be helpful. We may still need you.”
I switch my mic back on. “Thank you, holding on flies.”
When I turn it off again, Odile is still watching me.
She’s in her street clothes, a surprisingly non-expensive-looking pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt, but she hasn’t washed off the angelic ghost makeup yet. The wigs we’d bought for her were ruined in the fire, so the hair and makeup team wound Odile’s actual brown hair into elaborate waves. In this moment, she looks exactly like the glamorous movie star I always used to envision her as, before I really knew her.
“He’s having a crisis of confidence.” Odile sighs, meets my eyes again, and looks down at the empty seat beside her that Nick just vacated.
I hesitate—is she really okay with me getting that close?—but she nods down at it again. I sit gingerly, making sure not to put my hand anywhere near the armrest between us. Odile fixes her gaze on the stage.
“He is, huh?”
She nods. “Now that he’s performed in front of an audience, he’s afraid he’s making a complete fool of himself.”
I nod too. This is pretty standard actor stuff, especially for a first-time lead, but given that it’s Nick, I don’t feel particularly sorry for him. His voice hasn’t cracked in any of the dress rehearsals so far, but I could tell he was holding back today on some of the tougher songs, as if he was afraid to let himself sing full-out. “And he decided to confide in you?”