 
Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater

By Ty Unglebower  
Copyright 2014 Ty Unglebower  
Smashwords Edition

Cover image by Bee Javier. Cover text by J. Lea Lopez
**Smashwords Edition, License Notes  
**

Thank you for purchasing this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please encourage them to legally purchase their own copy from their preferred source. Your respect for the work of the author is greatly appreciated.

Table of Contents

Author's Note

Stage Ahoy

Aroma Therapy

Double Duty

Theatrical Redundancy

Living Ghosts

Accidental Audition

Story Summit

Sound of Serendipity

Dueling Carols

Art, Look, Listen

About the Author
Author's Note

Thank you so much for choosing to read my book, out of tens of thousands available to you today. I hope you find it worth your time to read. I certainly found it worth my time to write it for you to enjoy.

Though the stories in this collection are all set within the confines of not just the community theater world, but within one specific community theater, I hope that one need not be intimate with theater itself to recognize aspects of the heartache, triumph, courage, fear and folly explored therein. Such things are in some ways common to the ordinary and extraordinary human experience. If not, then I can say with near certainty that such things are universal within the artistic community both inside and outside of theater.

Indeed the arts as a whole call to us, laugh at us, serve us, challenge us and comfort us, all while utilizing us to perpetuate their existence. We flawed humans who enroll ourselves in that task can only hope to do some degree of justice to that noble mission, each in our own way. These stories are about people attempting to do that very thing, (whether or not they realize it.)

That being said, this collection is theater-oriented by design, and though these stories take place in a fictional playhouse, I'm willing to bet money that theater folk will recognize a little bit of their own venues as they read. I'd like to think so, anyway.

"Thank you for ten" is how polite actors respond to the ten-minute warning issued by the stage manager of a production. For me as an actor, that's when the show truly begins. Time to lose yourself in your art. If you're not ready by ten, you won't ever be. If you haven't already, after you say "thank you for ten" it's time to focus on the moment while watching the future out of the corner of your eye.

That's what I've tried to do with these stories-focus on a moment or a string of moments within a specific venue so as to illuminate the broader concept of theater and art itself. Whether you have done theater yourself or never so much as set foot inside of one, I hope that as you read this collection, you, like the actor ten minutes before curtain, will allow yourself for a time to be lost in the small sliver of the theater world.

On with the show.

-Ty Unglebower, June 16, 2014

Stage Ahoy

A metal fishing boat, about fifteen feet long made its way through town by way of two sets of legs. Passerby parted for it as it traveled by fits and starts down the sidewalk.

The legs belonged to two men. Two men with a height difference of more than a foot. The shorter of the two was in front, the boat completely concealing his head. The taller one contorted his neck in such a way that his face rested on the outside of the boat. He acted as ostensible navigator given that he could see what lie ahead of them about half of the time.

"Trashcan coming up. Move to your left, Tommy," the taller one said. "Just a little."

"How damn much farther do we have to go, anyway?" Tommy's voice reverberated off the metal that surrounded his head.

"Another block.

"I'm roasting in this thing. Ouch. Dammit, Eddy."

The navigator had failed to alert the weary helmsman of the parking meter.

"Sorry," Eddy said. "I can't see everything."

"Can you see the theater, by any chance?"

"Yeah. Like I said, we're almost there."

A moment later, with groans of both exhaustion and relief, the two men set the boat down on the sidewalk in front of The Little Dionysus Playhouse.

Sweat poured from Tommy's bald head and down his face. He wiped it on his shirt and exhaled loudly. "We just had to do this during Summerfest, when there is nowhere to park."

"I didn't know they were having that today," Eddy said. "You think I enjoyed having to park a million blocks away with this thing?"

"You boys are lost if you're looking for the river," called a laughing old man who walked around them on the sidewalk.

"Yeah, good one sir," Tommy said. He turned to Eddy. "You know, that's just as funny the twelfth time you hear it."

"My neck hurts," Eddy said, leaning against the door of the building.

"Don't get comfortable yet," Tommy said. "Let's just get this stupid thing in there first."

"We'll have to carry it through the door sideways, I think."

"Yeah, you're right," Tommy said. "Let me open the door first. And we need to be careful, lots of glass on these doors."

Tommy reached for the brass handle and pulled. Nothing happened. He reached for each of the other three doors. All locked. "Perfect," he said. "Gruber said he'd be here. Now what?"

"We can take it in the back way," Eddy said. "I've got the code for the lock box."

"How come you have the code, and I don't?"

Eddy shrugged. "I was a stage manager last year. Were you?"

"No, I hate being stage manager."

"Well then there you go."

Tommy started to say something but just shook his head. He sighed and pointed towards the boat. Eddy nodded, and they mounted the boat on top of themselves again.

"God, it's even hotter in here than before," Tommy called back to him.

"It's just a few yards this time," Eddy said. "I'll tell you when to turn. Watch all the cars."

In a few moments the duo had shuffled and stumbled their way through the filled- up public gravel parking lot on the side of the theater building. They put the boat down again.

"This place needs a loading zone or something," Tommy said, leaning against the wall near the back door.

Eddy leaned down and squinted at the electronic lock box. He entered five numbers. It beeped, and a green light flashed. He pulled open a small drawer and removed a key. He held it up to Tommy. "All set."

Eddy's big hands fumbled with the key a moment, but he finally got it to turn. The door unlocked with a click and Eddy pushed it open. He walked into the room and flipped on a nearby light switch. Props, costumes, a stray script here and there and old, run down chairs and sofas covered the room. It was the green room, where actors waited between scenes. A small hallway, referred to as "The Funnel" linked it to the backstage area.

"Sideways again?" Tommy asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Let's do it."

Each man assumed the position, the shorter Tommy in front of the boat with his arms wrapped behind him and the taller Eddy bringing up the rear.

"Ready?" Tommy asked. Eddy indicated he was.

By way of some tight maneuvering, the gentlemen brought the boat fully into the green room. Tommy set down his end and slapped his hands together. "There. Finally. Let's get out of here."

Eddy hadn't put down his end of the boat yet. He looked down at Tommy. "But we said we'd put it on the stage."

"It's in the building," Tommy said, "Close enough. Let's roll, I'm hungry."

"But I said we'd put it on the stage."

Silence between the two of them for several minutes.

"Fine," Tommy said. "The stage."

Tommy huffed and walked over to the hallway door. He opened it and stepped inside. He found the light switch after a short search. A blue light bulb provided enough working light, but the hallway was clearly too narrow to turn the boat through the subsequent passage leading to backstage.

"No way," Tommy told his companion back in the green room. "We'll have to take it all the way through the Funnel and out the other end to the house."

Both men lifted their own end of the vessel and proceeded into The Funnel toward its opposite door.

"I wonder if they'll ever figure out who first named this 'The Funnel'," Eddy said as they negotiated the tiny confines, trying not to knock anything off of the shelves that resided there.

"I'd like to rename it the 'Pain in My Ass Hallway' to tell you the truth," Tommy said. "Put it down, let me get the door to the house."

Even turned on its side, the boat took up most of the room in The Funnel.

Tommy reached for the door. For the second time that day a door failed to open for him. He pushed against it once, then twice, but it would not move more than a few inches. He banged his forehead lightly against the door.

"Something must be blocking it," Eddy said.

"Good call, Eddy," Tommy said, head still on the door. "Good call."

"I'll go out there through the stage," Eddy said. "See what's up. Hang on."

Eddy eased his way between the shelves and the boat, then through the opening to backstage. Tommy could hear his footsteps on the stage, then down the stage steps, finally stopping on the other side of the door. The whole time Tommy rested his forehead on it until Eddy banged on it from the other side. Tommy put both palms up to his forehead. "Ow, god, Eddy, that's my head, what are you doing?"

"I was letting you know I made it."

"Thanks, Eddy. You'll never know how worried I was. Now what's blocking the door?"

"Pile of lumber. Two-by-fours, mostly. A few other sizes."

"How many?"

"Forty. Fifty."

Tommy swore to himself. "Is there room to move them somewhere else?"

"Lot of stuff piled around out here. Kind of a mess. If the board of directors saw this..."

"Focus for me, Eddy. What about the aisle? Any room there?"

A pause.

"Yeah, we could move them there."

"Okay, stay there a second, I'm coming."

After several clumsy attempts to step around the boat during which he fell to the floor once, Tommy walked through the backstage door. He emerged onto the stage and looked down into the house to his left where Eddy was standing by the lumber. Tommy gritted his teeth and pulled out his cell phone to check the time.

"Let's do this," he told Eddy.

Tommy jumped down from the stage and joined Eddy by the lumber pile.

Nearly half an hour and several splinters later, (neither of them had thought to seek out gloves in the workshop until they were nearly finished), the pile of lumber now sat in the middle of one of the aisles. Both men sat in the front row of seats for a few minutes to recuperate.

"I'm gonna smell like a lumber yard for a week," Tommy said. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

Both of them got up, and Tommy opened the now unobstructed door to the Funnel.

"Huh," Tommy grunted. "What do you know? The boat's still there."

"Well, where would it have gone?"

Tommy shrugged. "I just had the distinct feeling it wasn't going to be there. Let's do this."

Eddy slid the boat out of the Funnel and into the house, careful not to let it scrape against the painted door frame. By now Tommy was panting a bit.

"I could probably do the rest by myself if you wanted to relax," Eddy told him.

"No way," Tommy said. "All for one and all that. Besides, I'm not a quitter. If I had been, I'd have gone home an hour ago."

Tommy once more grabbed his end of the boat . He guided it to the edge of the stage. The two men lifted it up onto the stage and released it.

"There. Praise to all holy things. It's done," Tommy declared.

"We should probably put the lumber back where it was, though," Eddy said.

"I guess," Tommy said shaking his head, and pointing toward the stage. "This better be a damn good show. All this lumber. A boat. What show is it, anyway?'

"I haven't heard. Maybe South Pacific?"

Tommy shook his head. "Not the right kind of boat. Oh well. Shall we?"

"Wait," said Eddy, raising his finger in the air. He stepped into the Funnel, and a few moments later came back with two pair of gloves. He tossed one set to Tommy, who nodded his approval. Both men slipped on their gloves and began moving the lumber back to its original position.

"Okay," Tommy shouted when the last board was in place in front of the door. "Longest 20 minutes ever. Let's go get steak."

Tommy gave the boat the Finger and followed Eddy back through the Funnel. Eddy stopped before they got to the green room.

"Did you see this?" Eddy asked. He pulled a piece of paper off of the door to the green room.

Tommy shook his head. "Wasn't paying attention when we came though. What's it say?"

Eddy read the handwritten note.

"Tom/Eddy---

Thanks for your help with the boat. Appreciate it. If you have time/energy, could you move the lumber out from in front of the door and leave it in the aisle? No big deal, but would save some time. Thanks! -G."

Eddy gave Tom the note. Tom stared at it for a moment.

"Screw that noise," Tom said. "We'll just say we didn't see the note. Put it back up there." He handed the paper back to Eddy.

"But we did see it," Eddy protested. "And he asked nicely."

"In a note. It doesn't count if you ask nicely in a note, didn't you know that?"

Eddy squinted. "That's silly. Why not?"

"Because I'm hungry, that's why. Now come on, let's get back to the truck."

Tommy grabbed the paper out of Eddy's hand, and taped it back to the door. Then he shut the door. A few minutes later they were outside the building, key replaced in lock box, back door secured.

"Food," Tommy said.

The walk back to their distant and obscure parking space went much faster without a boat. Tommy, who kept looking over his shoulder every few minutes during the walk said little.

When they dragged themselves at last into Eddy's truck they sat in silence for a few minutes. A brass band, part of the Summerfest played from a few blocks away.

"To the steakhouse, I suppose," Eddy said, turning the ignition. Tommy grabbed his arm.

"No, not the steakhouse. Dammit."

"Well, where then?"

Tommy rested his forehead on the dashboard and closed his eyes. "Back to the theater to move that stupid lumber back into the aisle." His hand was already on the handle of his door.

Eddy smiled. "You're a good man, Tommy. A good man." Eddy opened his own door and stepped onto the street. "Steak is on me tonight, my friend."

"And beer," Tommy said. "I want a beer with my steak."

"I thought you never drank during daylight hours?"

Tommy had already started his long walk back to the theater. "I didn't until today."
Aroma Therapy

The olfactory nerves in the brain are the only parts of that organ that are exposed to the open air. High up in the nostril/nasal cavity the ganglia or whatever they are drop down. In essence, smell is the only sense that goes directly to our brains. More so with me. I guess my ganglia have always been extra sensitive. Especially when I'm in a theater.

Not that you need a super-nose like mine to detect most theatrical scents. You don't even have to be a theater nerd to recognize them right off, so much a part of every venue are they. There's the paint. The cut lumber. The heat of the lighting instruments above the stage cooking the dust that really ought to be brushed off more often. The astringent tartness of the dressing rooms and the varying degrees of textile mustiness that never seem completely extinguished from the curtain no matter how often it's cleaned.

You might have to spend a lot of time doing theater yourself to detect a few other odors. For example, plenty of my fellow actors can, like me, smell when the audience will be a good one long before the curtain goes up. It's in the air, a sort of electric, cleansing non-scent that is in and of itself a scent. (I told you you had to be an actor.)

Then you have smells that are specific to a given theater. Each one has its own unique blend of fragrances hiding behind the common ones. This is where I start to separate from the rest of the pack. Most people judge a theater first by its stage, then by its acoustics followed by its appeal to the eyes. But I take in the fragrance profile.

Some newer theaters have a faint electronic odor. Others are earthy. I swear in one theater I used to do plays in as a child, there was always the faintest scent of butter in the air.

Believe it or not I can even detect changes in a specific fragrance profile depending on such factors as the seasons of the year, the cast, the nature of the show. Sure a few others notice how Sally's perfume mixes with the cappuccino Doug always brings to rehearsal, but I've not yet met anyone else who can tell by smelling the air whether the current show is a drama or comedy. That's the sort of thing my nose picks up on.

Of all the theaters I've performed in over the years, (and there have been plenty), one of them sticks out most in my mind for having the most pleasant mixture of aromas: The Little Dionysus Playhouse.

All year long the air in the LDP has an autumn undercurrent. It's more difficult to detect when you're moving around a lot, but if I pause long enough I can always find it anywhere in the building. (It's strongest backstage, though.) Just this touch of scorched wood and damp air. I've always loved autumn, and perhaps that baseline-October smell is why I'm most fond of the LDP's fragrance profile.

Other rooms at the LDP have their own signatures. Passing through The Funnel, (that's a long, narrow hallway connecting the house to the greenroom and backstage) I get a bit of a metallic tang. The lobby smells of wine, which always amused me because the LDP doesn't serve any. A mix of paper, ink and coffee hang in the air of the green room.

I remember a show I did at the LDP once; I played a supporting role. It dealt with the aftermath of a rape. It doesn't get much darker than that. As we performed the play, the drama was thick enough to have a fragrance of its own.

The actress playing the victim, (an actress that has since gone on to appear in several nationally syndicated commercials) had not been feeling well that night. It was a taxing role and canceling that night's performance had been suggested. She declined, having medicated her cold symptoms carefully beforehand.

In the scene I remember most, my character was sitting in a chair in the living room of this rape victim. Foolishly she had tried to host a small gathering, ignoring the damage that had been done to her. At one point the character finally breaks down in anguish over the crime.

On the night in question, the actress later said, the cold medications had made her nervous and I suppose part of it was channeled into the scene. Whatever the cause, the effect was brilliant and horrifying at the same time. Writhing, crying, shouting until red-faced, she turned in a tour-de force. It was as though the scene were brand new to the rest of us.

Dramatic tension smells like copper. I don't mean to suggest that if one were to sniff a copper pipe they would recognize tension. (I know this, because I tried it.) Nonetheless, tense, dramatic moments extract from the environment and the people around me a trace of what can be only described as copper.

It's stronger in some venues than others, and it's strongest at the LDP. The strongest I ever smelled it was during that scene that night.

It started as a subtle presence. Then a trace. The trace evolved to a constant. Then from a constant to dominant as the actress threw books in anger across the make-believe room, and women in the audience began to weep. Finally the smell went from dominant to overpowering in the fleeting moments between her character moving as though to commit suicide, and my own character's intervention to prevent it. I don't believe the shaking of her body within my arms was acting at that point.

On a far less dramatic night at the LDP, I was in a silly comedy. It was a parody of Euripides or something like that. Frankly, much of what I smelled that night was perspiration from the larger man in the cast who somehow managed to move around with as much slapstick energy as the rest of us. But there were brief lapses in that odor when he was not on stage. During one of my monologues, I smelled the almost medicinal scent of the people laughing uproariously for an extended period.

This is one of the more rare scents, even for me. It doesn't happen often, because it seems the conditions have to be just right. If the venue is too intimate, I just smell people. If it's a huge venue the smell gets lost in the ether. So this "comedy aroma" if you will is one of the most delicate. It smells like something between a cough drop and cologne. It isn't as unpleasant as it sounds. In fact I dare say if it could be bottled, it would sell quite well. I guess the LDP is the perfect conductor for it.

So during this comedy I delivered a monologue designed to seem like it was about sex, but in the end the audience realizes it's about the columns on a building. One Saturday night the audience and I just clicked. I smelled something at first, and then with each passing moment as the laughter grew the fragrance became even more intense, as though everyone were chewing on a cough drop at the same time. By the end of the monologue, I was certain everyone in the room could smell it, but nobody else reported doing so. (I did encounter one acquaintance who said the air during the show was somehow "refreshing". Maybe that's his take on the same experience.) Quite memorable.

Yet all of the aromas I ever detected at the LDP paled in comparison to something I smelled there only once, and only for a few moments.

I do a little bit of set painting now and again, and one particular evening years ago I was working back in the LDP's small workshop. I was putting some primer on a few pieces of plywood they would need for later in the season.

Now the current show was in all kinds of trouble. It had been postponed twice, and then when they finally got to within two weeks of opening two actors quit. I knew the stage manager for that one, and we'd talk sometimes when I'd come in to do some painting. He was at the end of all of his ropes.

One day I entered through the lobby while this show was rehearsing. There was a bit of a scuffle going on, though I didn't know it at the time.

It's a quirk of the LDP that in order to get to the back rooms from the front, you have to go into the house of the theater and through that Funnel. I didn't want to disturb whatever was going on in the house, so I was going to go around the outside, and enter the back door. That's when something caught my attention from inside the house.

I heard one of the actors giving a speech, but not one from the script. I know that because he was talking about things not being over, and how much can happen in three weeks. I stuck my head closer to the door of the house, (which was closed). This young man, (his name escapes me now) told stories of shows he'd been in that were in worse shape than this one. Told them that as long as you loved what you were doing, there was hope, and that there was no reason to believe they couldn't pull it all together if they remembered that.

That's when it hit me. Pine. Not Pinesol, or some other cleaning agent, but legitimate pine. As though every Christmas tree I'd ever had suddenly appeared right under my nose for a minute. More than that, it was almost more pine than actual pine trees are. It actually canceled out all other smells and that never happens.

By the time I took a second breath, it was gone. No more pine. Not a trace. Wine, dust, paint, cloth, fall leaves, (though it was April), everything I normally smelled there, but no more pine.

Then I heard a few claps from inside the house, and someone shout, "we can do this, folks. He's right."

I want to say the play was Shakespeare, but as I said that was a while ago. Never smelled pine like that before or since.

People joke with me in my old age that if ever I had a head cold, I'd experience no emotions. I laugh because I see their point, even though obviously it isn't true. Especially these days, since I don't smell as sharply as I used to. And like I said, it's always been more potent in theaters. My doctor tells me flat out that that's impossible. I had a shrink once who told me that because I was happiest in the theater, I simply paid more attention to what I smelled while I was inside one. I'll give that a maybe.

Either way, I love the aromas of a theater. All of them are sweet to me. But Shakespeare was wrong; a rose by any other name doesn't always smell as sweet. The Little Dionysus Playhouse, in my mind, will always smell sweetest among theaters and never sweeter than the brief moment I smelled the deepest pine ever.
Double Duty

"You're still making way too much noise," the director told him as he opened the door at the bottom of the metal spiral staircase. "It sounds like a war drum."

That was just one of many reasons Patrick didn't want to do this. He kept telling himself that somehow, someway, things always work out in the theater in the end. Almost always, anyway.

"I'm going as softly as I can, Jen," he told the director. "Those steps reverberate."

"Why weren't they carpeted?" Jen asked. "Why would anything in a theater that close to the audience make so much noise?"

"People don't usually have to run from the light both and down to the stage in the middle of a scene," Patrick said. He wished he would not be one of the few to do so.

"Could he do it in his socks?" This was Asher, the portly, pony-tailed stage manager for the show.

Jen shook her head. "Sounds slippery."

"What about some of those slipper socks?" Asher asked. "Little non-stick treads on the bottom, you know the ones I mean?" He looked at Patrick.

"Yeah, I do. I could try it in those, I guess." He'd rather not try it at all. "I'd have to get a pair, though. I don't have any."

"I'll pick up a pair tomorrow," Jen said. "I'll budget it to the show. Can you get here early enough to run it a few times tomorrow before we open?"

Last minute changes to his routine. He hated them. Damn that Parker guy for letting his wife have a baby before the second weekend.

"Yes, I can be here," Patrick said. "But can we at least run the other stuff a few more times today? I'm not sure we have it yet."

Jen nodded, and Asher waddled his way down the aisle between the seats and into the small hallway that led backstage. Patrick opened the spring locked door he'd just exited and ascended the spiraling metallic staircase up to the lighting booth of the theater. Once there, he leaned out of the open glass partition, and stared down at an expectant Jen. "Okay, so I'll already be up here, I'll change into the costume at intermission."

"Right," Jen called up to him. "Do you have your jerry-rig set up now?"

"Working on it," Patrick called down. He punched a few buttons on his cell phone, and positioned it carefully at an odd angle to the master light switch. Jen had been so worried about reducing the noise, he'd not yet had the chance to show her this little trick. It had worked when it was just him. But he hadn't tried it with everything else yet.

He slipped on his portable headset. This was one of the great perks of the Little Dionysus Playhouse; the audio of the performance was piped in through speakers in the backstage area, and into the technician's headsets when needed.

Patrick then passed through a small doorway to a tiny adjacent alcove with its own glass window looking down on the stage. This was the sound booth. He flipped on the microphones. The show had no sound effects, and hence no sound technician. If it had, they could have made this whole stunt go away.

But it wasn't going away. Every actor would be needed. Asher insisted on being on the ground floor in case anything went wrong, so it couldn't be him. Jen herself was one of those rare directors that couldn't bear to watch her own show. Patrick was, as far as anybody could tell, all they had with Parker not being there.

Patrick sat back down in his own chair in the lighting booth.

"Ready when Asher is," Patrick called down to Jen.

"Asher, are you in place back there?" Jen hollered in the ear-piercing way that had become her trademark. It didn't help that the stage mike had picked up her voice, and shot into Patrick's headset.

"All set," Asher called from his unseen position.

Without warning, Jen began reciting lines from the final scene of the play.

"Perhaps, my lord, it is for the best.....How can that be? What do you mean, child....Only this, that Providence, be it for or against our machinations cannot help but bring about the greater good."

Jen emphasized the word "good" because it was his cue, though he knew the actress on the day wouldn't do him this favor. A split second after "good", Patrick pressed enter on the ancient light board and took off out of the booth and down the steps. He tread as lightly as possible.

He descended, Jen's voice crackling through the headset as he did so. He reached the door and pushed it open as quickly as he could, while still being gentle with it. He crept into the house just behind the back row of seats.

When he glanced up at the stage lights for a moment he could tell that the long fade that he had programmed into the light board was working. It had to be just enough to leave the actors in dim light and to shut itself off as a blackout at the end of the play. He moved with stealth along the back row of seats and slipped out into the lobby.

Through the lobby he ran now, past the large paintings of Dionysus and some philanthropist, out the front door to the sidewalk in front of the building. The audio hissed a bit, and got softer as the signal traveled through walls. But it was enough to give him a ballpark of where they were in the play. And of course during the play, more than one person would be speaking. Hopefully they would be slower than Jen was as she recited everyone's lines.

Patrick tore around the side of the building and into the back door, which was already hanging open for him. It led straight into the green room, where his costume shoes lay on a small table near the door to a long hallway that led backstage, called "The Funnel".

Here Patrick paused, approximating how long it would take him to put his shoes on during a performance. He nodded to himself a few times, opened the door to the Funnel, and passed into its blue light-tinged darkness. He stepped through the small opening that led backstage.

"Headset," he heard Asher whisper hoarsely.

"Damn," Patrick said, as he unclipped the battery pack from his pants, took the set off and handed it to Asher. Patrick listened for his cue, which thankfully was a line or two away.

"I do believe, my lord, the courier you dispatched has returned," Jen called out, again emphasizing Patrick's cue. He stepped onto the stage on the right hand side.

"My lord," Patrick said, fighting not to look winded. "It falls upon me to inform you that the Assembly has adjourned."

Jen continued reciting the lines, free of all emotion. For his part, Patrick had no more lines, but his work was not yet complete. Not only did the "Lord" in the scene now have to give him a list of instructions, but without detection Patrick had to hit "send" on the cell phone he had hidden in his pocket. This small act he thought surely Asher would be able to do for him. But Asher, it seemed, would be "tangled up" in getting everyone in place backstage for the curtain call. He'd told Asher how silly that was, but the stage manager had put on such a pity party for himself and his "extra job" that Patrick had agreed to do it, just to make the whining stop.

"Greater even then we shall ever see again?" Jen said. Patrick stole a glance at the lights, which clearly had dimmed since his arrival. "Yes, my lord, greater even than that."

A pause, during which Patrick felt more than a little awkward. Then the blackout happened as planned. That part had worked at least.

"I'd like it a bit tighter if possible," Jen called out from the darkness. "Can we do it?"

"I'll work on it as soon as we're done here," Patrick said. He knew that saying such things kept directors calm, even though he wasn't about to change a single setting on the light board.

"Okay, now the big one," Jen said. She started clapping. "Good show, loved it, changed my life, and all that crap. Everybody comes out in the dark, and then..."

Patrick had already hit "send" on the cell phone before Jen was done talking, because he knew it would take a moment. If it worked at all. He held his breath, more nervous than a lighting guy should ever be. And then, it happened. Full stage lights clicked on, illuminating everything.

"There we go!" Patrick called out to Jen, clapping as he did so.

"Nice one," said Asher, who appeared on the stage behind him.

"Not bad at all with the timing," Jen said. "All by cell phone, you said?"

Patrick held up the cell phone with a smile. "I positioned the other cell so that the vibration from the incoming call jiggles the master switch just enough."

"Excellent," Jen said. "The question is...can we do it in costumes, and with shoe changes, and a house full of people during a live show?"

So much for feeling relieved or proud of himself, thought Patrick. "Guess we'll find out tomorrow night," he said.

"I'll probably have Natty take the headset from you for the real thing," Asher told him, referring to his assistant stage manager, who no doubt would also be indisposed to flip the switch up in the booth. Patrick hadn't even bothered to ask.

"As long as the shoes and phone are in place," Patrick said. "I'm willing to run that a dozen times tomorrow, if that's what it takes." He hoped Jen would pick up on his hint, and actually run it about a dozen times tomorrow.

"Be here by 5:30?" Jen asked. Patrick agreed.

*

The lights came up on the entire cast the following day as they practiced this new curtain call. Everyone bowed to the empty theater. Jen clapped from one of the aisles.

"That's four in a row," Asher said as he came on stage. "Timing works every time, I think we've got it."

"How long do I have for the whole thing?" Patrick asked Asher.

The stage manager looked down at a stopwatch. "Looks like about three minutes, though you've been getting there with about 15 seconds to spare."

Patrick longed for far more than 15 spare seconds.

"Patrick, how are you feeling about it?" Jen asked him.

"I think we're good," he said. He'd had his doubts about this plan, and had lost a little sleep over it the previous night. But after placing an umbrella by the exit in case it rained on him one of the nights, he felt he'd covered every base.

"Okay, is that it?" asked one of the actresses in the show. "I mean, do we need to do it again, or..." She motioned back toward the green room several times with her hand as she took several steps. Patrick couldn't stand her.

Jen asked Asher for his thoughts. He gave the thumbs up, and vanished back stage.

"Yes, all right then, go," Jen told the assembled actors. "Asher, what have we got?"

"One hour," he called from the bowels of backstage. The departing actors each called out, "Thank you, one hour" as they made their way back to their dressing rooms.

Forty-five minutes later, Patrick went through his nightly ritual of wiping down the light board. It was pure ceremony, but he never felt right until he'd done it. Several acting friends of his on learning about this joked that only performers had the right to undertake superstitious rituals.

That completed, he pressed the button on his headset and spoke into its microphone. "How's the house, Asher?"

"Looks like three-quarters full," Asher's husky voice hissed into the headphones. "But active."

"Noted," he said. This was his response to that question, no matter the answer.

Patrick ran over the plan in his head a few times as the stragglers in the house got to their seats. He didn't want to think too much about it yet, however. He had several jobs to do before that. So he settled in and waited through the opening welcome from one of the board members.

"Booth, 60 seconds," Asher said into the headset a few minutes later.

"Thank you, one minute," Patrick said. "Taking down the house lights."

Patrick rolled a lever down and the light in the house faded into nothing. A moment later Asher gave him his first light cue of the evening.

*

There were no problems with the first half of the show. Yet during the final scene before intermission Patrick's nerves began to set in a bit. He still had just over an hour before having to pull off his lighting stunt, but it felt a lot closer than that.

As the audience streamed out of the house and into the lobby below him, Patrick stood up to make his way downstairs to grab a cookie and use the bathroom. He noted his costume hanging there in the dark space at the top of the staircase. He clunked his way down the stairs, out the door in the back of the house and into the lobby.

A few minutes later he stood in the green room with a mass-produced grocery store cookie in his hand. He had not taken a single bite.

"Nervous about your big moment?" asked one of the actors. A tall, gray-haired jovial sort. Patrick looked up at him.

"Not really," Patrick said. "Not about giving the line anyway. More worried about pulling off the technical side of it, to be honest."

"Worked fine when we rehearsed it," the actor said.

Patrick nodded. "Yes, at least there's that."

"Don't worry," said the actor, "I'll find a way to bow in the dark if I have to. My ego will insist on it."

Patrick laughed, though he found nothing at all funny about it. The actor slapped him on the shoulder, and exited toward the dressing rooms.

He threw the uneaten cookie away and then checked the table near The Funnel for the third time. Both his costume shoes and his cell phone lie next to each other, near the actor's coat rack. Right where they should be.

"Ten minutes," Asher called to the actors and crew gathered in the green room. Everyone thanked him for ten, and he vanished back into The Funnel to do whatever it was Asher did at that moment.

Patrick walked toward the Funnel on his way back to the lighting booth to change into his costume. As he did so, his arm reached out and grabbed the door frame, stopping his own forward motion. He glanced at his shoes and phone one more time. He was seized by an impulse to move them around on the table, though he wasn't sure why. Just as he moved to do so, he ran into one of the actors.

"Sorry about that," the actor said. "Just wanted to grab my coat. It's always freezing back here. Next minute I'm burning up."

"Theaters," Patrick said with a shrug. It meant nothing at all, but he was too nervous to care as he made his way back to the lighting booth.

He changed into his costume in the small area at the top of the stairs. He wasn't a modest man, nevertheless the idea of changing right in front of the lighting booth window where half the audience could see did not appeal to him. He slipped into the pants tied up the tie, threw on the jacket (complete with stupid hanky arranged exactly as the costume designer insisted), and put on the non-slip slipper socks. He didn't like being without shoes up in the booth. It felt like a major safety breach. But the time for arguing that was long gone.

"I'm going to burn up wearing all this stuff up here," Patrick said into the headphones.

"Can't you hang the jacket over the back of your chair until it's time?" Asher asked a moment later. "That's probably the hottest part."

He hadn't even thought of that. Nothing obvious was getting through to him since intermission. He hated this whole idea more and more with each passing minute.

"Good point," he told Asher as he slipped off the jacket and draped it gently over his chair.

Patrick again began to wipe away non-existent dust from the work area in front of the lighting board. With each swipe he felt more in his place.

"Booth 60 seconds," Asher said through the headphones.

*

His mind remained clear and focused until the end of the penultimate scene. Upon the final exit of the tall gray-haired fellow that had slapped his shoulder during intermission, his mood changed. It was time to get ready.

As the performers entered for the final scene, Patrick stood up and pulled on his costume jacket. He checked the stupid hanky, made a few adjustments to the light board, and placed his finger over the button which would begin the ultra-slow fade that they had rehearsed. He double checked the settings on his second cell phone, and placed it exactly in the spot he had marked the previous day.

"All set up here," Patrick spoke into his headset.

"Break a leg," Asher whispered through the other end.

Then, his cue line was upon him. Patrick pressed the button for the long fade, opened the door, and snuck down the staircase. His feet still caused a muted ring but it was much better than the racket he made while wearing shoes.

He gripped the handrail as he rounded the first curve of the stairs, his ears tuned to his headset. The lines from the actors, interspersed with hissing static were still clear as he reached the bottom of the staircase and pushed on the door.

It caught on something and Patrick's breath caught as well. He pushed harder and whatever the obstruction was grated over the carpet and allowed him to pass through the small opening he had made. He glanced at the floor just long enough to see it was a small purse someone had left there which had not been there at intermission. No time to be annoyed.

He glanced up at the lights. They appeared to be dimming ever so slightly. So far so good.

Next he passed through the back doors and into the lobby, opening them only as much as he needed to slide through. One of the ushers was there at the ticket counter reading a book. She looked up at him and gave him the thumbs-up. He nodded and turned toward the exit. No rain outside.

It was chilly though, despite it being an early spring evening. The sidewalk was cool on his slipper-clad feet. He made his way to the side of the building. He could barely hear the actors through his head set now.

"Damn," he said to himself. He kept going, however, tapping on the headset and jiggling the wire a few times as he went. He moved faster, being unable to judge exactly where in the scene the actors were.

Patrick arrived at the back entrance on the side of the building. The door was open, waiting for him as promised. He made a mental note to buy Asher a drink after the show for making sure everything was unfolding properly.

He entered the green room. Several actors who had already made their final appearance sat chatting quietly on the various couches. One actress with a smaller part who would have passed for the ingénue in the cast had one been sought, leaned against one of the back walls chatting on her cell phone. A bit too loudly for the green room during a show, Patrick noted. He flipped the off switch on his now useless headset.

He reached for his costume shoes and sat down in the chair provided for him. He was a line or two behind where he had been when he rehearsed all of this, but was making good time nonetheless. He laced the second shoe, stood up, and took a breath to collect himself. He reached for the phone.

It wasn't there.

"The hell?" he asked to the air. He checked the table, under the table, all the nearby tables. Willing to bare the wrath of the costume designer later he got down on his knees and scanned the floor nearby, all the while his cue line to enter getting closer and closer. He would need all 15 of the spare seconds he usually achieved, and then some.

"Where's the phone?" he asked. Nobody replied so he asked again louder.

"Which phone?" asked the gray-haired man.

"The one I used to do the stupid light thing," Patrick said. "It's supposed to be here and it's gone, I need it yesterday!"

Several people leapt up from their seats, checking couch cushions, moving papers and other items to see if they could locate the vital piece of equipment. The entrance and the line was more important than bringing the house lights back up. But how would he alert everyone that the lights wouldn't be coming back up, if it came to that?

An actress on stage gave one of his early cue lines. Almost everyone in the green room was looking at him now. Almost everyone. When he realized this, he got an awful idea.

Patrick ran to the ingénue and grabbed her cell phone right out of her hands. She squealed in protest and reached for it.

"She'll call you back," Patrick said into the phone and he moved toward The Funnel. The girl ran after him, but several other quick-thinking actors blocked her.

He wouldn't have a moment to spare. He ran into the Funnel with the unfamiliar phone hoping it wouldn't go into lock mode first. Its lights mixed with the blue hue of backstage as he attempted to ascertain where the proper buttons were. He located all the numbers, pressed them and found "send" just as the actress onstage delivered his entrance cue line.

"I do believe, my lord, the courier you dispatched has returned."

Patrick was still on the far side of the stage. He couldn't enter on the left, because that would mean his character was coming from the kitchen, and not from town. The awkwardness of the pause on stage gripped his throat and he shuffled madly through the crew members assembled backstage. Asher was already looking at him.

"That is, I believe I saw him pull into the drive moments ago," the actress on stage ad-libbed. Patrick, hands clasped behind his back, with his thumb on what he hoped was "send" stormed into the scene, almost tripping as he entered.

"My lord, it falls upon me to inform you that the assembly has adjourned."

He was somewhat short of breath as he delivered the line, and he had been late. Glancing up at the lights he could tell the fade was a bit further along into the action than it would have been had he been on time. But no matter. It might seem too dim near the end, but the fade was working. He thought some of the actors on the stage were trying to recite their lines faster in order to catch up to the delay.

Moments later in the well-timed black out, the healthy applause told him that the audience had not noticed the hitch at all. The other actors entered the stage for the final company bow. He had pulled it off.

Almost. For a moment he'd forgotten the phone. He hit send, and heard a beep. He'd hit the speakerphone button instead. In the dark, as the applause began to fade into a bit of confused chatter, Patrick turned around and scanned the glowing device in his hand until he found the proper button. He pressed it, and turned back around towards the darkness and the audience. It took longer than it had with his phone, but the light clicked back on. The audience (some of whom had stood up to leave) renewed their applause upon seeing the entire cast standing there, taking their company bow.

On cue Patrick turned and exited the stage with everyone, never in his life having been so relieved at the end of a show. In the shuffle he felt a hand wrench the cell phone from him. He looked up just in time to see the phone's owner storming through the darkness of backstage. "Thanks, it was an emergency," he called to her. She didn't look back at him.

"Anybody know what the hell happened to my phone?" Patrick asked over the din of actors returning to the green room as soon as he entered. A few of the people that had helped him look for the phone before his entrance stood about, seeming to expect answers themselves-as though it had been they that suffered near catastrophe. A few other actors looked at him, and mentioned they knew nothing, surprised that the phone had been moved.

The rest of the actors kept moving without response, and he repeated his question loudly enough to surprise the group. Nobody ignored him this time.

"It was right over here on the table with my shoes when I left after intermission," Patrick said, pointing toward the table.

Nobody knew anything about it. Which is what he expected. Just as he began to survey the area for it, Jen came in from through the back door, having spent the show at a nearby bar having sodas while she didn't watch. "How'd it go?" she asked to the room. Asher answered.

"Good times," he said. "Round of applause for Patrick for getting that done almost without a hitch." Asher began clapping, and much of the room followed suit. For his own part Patrick didn't care about applause. He cared about two things: the fact that it was all over for the night, and finding his phone.

"Almost without a hitch?" Jen asked. Asher explained the brief timing issue in a manner that made it sound less worrisome than it had actually been. Jen seemed satisfied. "It'll probably be the last time anyway," she said. "I ran into Aaron over at the King Richard. He said he'd come in for us and deliver that final line tomorrow and Sunday. If they can find a costume small enough for him."

Patrick, though he felt he should have been relieved, was one part annoyed and one part disappointed. For a moment or two he just stood where he'd been once Jen left. Then he began his search for his phone. He still needed to find that, after all.

He searched the green room. His own pockets. The dressing room. He'd given up when the actor who'd caught a chill at intermission reached for his jacket. A jacket that was lying on the table, and not hanging on the rack this time. The guy didn't even notice the small clicking sound the followed as he lifted his jacket off of the table. Without looking though, Patrick knew. He glanced at the table and saw his phone. Somehow, it had wedged itself into the pocket of the actor's coat when he'd carelessly tossed it on top of Patrick's stuff. Patrick stared at it a moment, and then laughed.

The guy never should have put his coat there. Patrick knew he should have kept the phone on him the entire time, and that Jen should have had a better plan earlier in the week. And there were probably a dozen or so other things that should and should not have happened in the entire affair. But as he watched a small cluster of actors make their way outside he reminded himself that such was theater: chaos mixed with fear, leading to resourcefulness and in an amazing number of cases, success. (Or something close enough to it.) All because people find a way.

And now it was time to find his way to the bar, and tell one of his new theater stories for the first time. He hoped he'd get it right.
Theatrical Redundancy

"And that's 12, I say again 12 coat racks," Stacy said, stepping out from behind one of them. Her friend Anna scribbled onto her clipboard. "You may want to add to your little note that it's 11 more than any theater needs."

"Are you going to say that every single time?" Anna asked as she brushed her dirty blond hair out of her face.

"No. Only for the items this place has too many of," Stacy said. "And here let me."

"Stacy I'm 31 years old, I don't want to wear a neon pink scrunchie."

Stacy ignored her and stood behind her friend, doing up her hair into a more labor-friendly arrangement.

"That's pretty tough talk coming from someone who spends her free time in a community theater."

"Stacy."

"So much free time I may add that I hardly get to see her lately."

"You're seeing me now," Anna said, glancing around the basement, and pointing to a pile of trunks near the coat racks. "Let's see what's over there."

Stacy rolled her eyes. "I don't consider this the most exciting way to spend time with my best friend."

"How can you not think this is exciting?" Anna asked. "Look at all this stuff. It's like a sunken pirate ship." Anna spread her arms wide and spun around in a circle, indicating the various items that filled every corner of the basement of the Little Dionysus Playhouse. Coat racks. Lawn chairs. Statues. Oil paintings hung on the stone walls. Shelves of dust covered books. Bicycles. Helmets. Vintage phones. And that was just in the section they were standing in.

"That's one big difference between you and me," Stacy said, dragging herself to the collection of trunks Anna had pointed to. "Twelve coat racks. You write it down on your little clipboard." Stacy scrunched up her nose and pretended to scribble notations onto her hand. "It's just props."

"Coat racks aren't props. They're set pieces." Anna said.

"Please don't explain the difference," Stacy said.

"Stacy, if you're so miserable, just go home. I'll take inventory myself."

"That's not what I said, come on now," Stacy told her. "I'm happy to help you. I'm here aren't I? I just admit, I don't get it." Stacy jiggled one of the wooden coat racks.

"Get what?" Anna asked. She set down the clipboard and stood on tiptoe, reaching for the top trunk on the stack. Stacy, who was a good four inches taller came over and helped guide the trunk to the floor.

"All this," Stacy said, extending her arms just as Anna had earlier.

"You don't like theater?"

"No, I do, I like to go to plays. I've seen you in some, remember?"

"That doesn't mean you like it." Anna knelt down on the floor, looking for the latch on the trunk.

"I do like it. But 12 coat racks? How efficient is that? Save space and have just one for any play that needs a coat rack. This is a non-profit after all."

"One coat rack isn't going to fit every director's idea of the scene," Anna said, squinting as she tried and failed to pull the trunk open.

"Oh come on," Stacy said. "Couldn't that go on forever? I mean if you had the money and the room, you could have fifty coat racks stored away. Or a hundred."

"If we had the money and room, I'm sure we would. Here we go." There was a click, and Anna opened the trunk, the lid facing towards Stacy and hiding the contents from her. "Fun."

"What is it?" Stacy asked. "A collection of toothpicks from foreign lands?"

"Better," said Anna, a grin forming across her face. She reached into the trunk, and held a plastic sword over her head.

"You said the weapons were locked up in the office," Stacy said. "Kids and all."

"The metal ones are, but these are just toys. Trunk should have been labeled, though. Hand me the clipboard, please."

Stacy grabbed the clipboard and sat down next to Anna. They both peered into the trunk.

There were toy swords with realistic colors, and ones painted pink. Most had "LDP" written in permanent marker under the hilt. One was curved.

"Hey," Stacy said reaching for the curved one. "My brother had one of these when we were little. It's like an Arab sword."

"I challenge you," Anna said, pointing her own, straighter plastic toy at her friend.

Stacy laughed. "Come on," she said, "what are you a 10 year old boy?" She tossed the sword back into the trunk.

"No, I'm a 31 year old woman and I want to play swords so come on." Anna gestured towards Stacy's abandoned sword. Stacy shook her head and stood up. Anna wacked her on the backside with the sword.

"Ow," Stacy protested through a laugh. She rubbed her posterior at the point of impact. "I know it's big, but it's not invincible."

"Then defend it," Anna said, managing to get another smack in.

Stacy laughed, as her eyes moved from Anna, to the trunk, and back again. Suddenly she swiped down and picked up a straight sword. "You can't duel with a stupid curvy sword," she said. "My brother found that out the hard way." Then she lunged. Anna screamed, and jumped out of the way. "I'm faster than I look, nerd."

Both women scooted around the tiny confines of the basement room, thrusting and parrying their plastic weapons with all of the grace of two modestly trained apes. Both proved far more adept at squealing and laughing. Finally, Stacy managed a lucky shot and knocked the sword out of Anna's hand. The weapon slid across the room.

"Okay, now," Anna said, all smiles vanishing for a moment. "That's theater property, how dare you abuse it?"

"Surrender accepted," Stacy said, catching her breath. "I should not be winded from that." Stacy retrieved Anna's sword and placed it along with her own back into the trunk.

"Well, well," Anna said. "Dare I say you were having fun just now, playing with props?"

"I was just messing around with toys, so were you," Stacy said. "It's good to play every now and then."

"Even if you're not a ten year old boy?"

"All right, all right, you've made your point," Stacy said, sitting down on the floor next to the trunk. "I had fun playing with silly toy swords. Is that a crime?"

"Of course not, but I didn't mean that," Anna said. "You were doing theater just now. You were acting."

Stacy laughed. "That wasn't theater. It was just pretending."

"That's a big part of acting, you know. Pretending."

"Well, yeah, I know. Like I said, I don't mind people acting. I like coming to see shows. I just think all this stuff is a bit much. It's what, 20 different toy swords?"

"I'm about to find out," Anna said. She scrolled "swords: plastic" on a piece of paper from her clipboard. "Could you check the rest of that stack back there? See if any of them have a label on them too?"

Stacy stood up with a short grunt. "Yeah, okay."

Stacy walked back behind the stack of trunks. She reached for the one on top of the stack, but her eye fell onto the nearby shelf, and she stopped. She walked over to the shelf, which was filled with mismatched teacups and saucers, most with tiny chips but some in pristine if dusty condition. She felt drawn to one pot in particular. At one point it had probably been white, but was now an off-yellow. Soft-pink roses, four of them, adorned the side, as well as the lid. Stacy reached for it with both hands and with care lifted it off of the shelf. She held it up to her eyes and smiled.

"What do you have there?" Anna asked as she rounded the corner. Stacy turned around and held up the teapot.

"My Gram had this teapot," she said. "Well, one just like it. I mean it was really close to this."

"Really?" Anna asked. "Brewed her own tea and such?"

"Yeah," Stacy said, her eyes wide. She took off the lid and smelled the inside. She coughed a little. "Hers didn't smell like dust though." Anna smiled. Stacy went on. "She used to let me help when I was a kid. She'd let me put the tea in first. That teapot was always one of the main things about being at Gram's. One time she finally let me pour. It was heavy and I dropped it. She caught it on the table. It chipped a little, but she wasn't mad at me..."

Stacy choked on the rest of her sentence and sniffled as tears came to her eyes. Anna rushed to her side, and put her arm around her shoulder, but said nothing.

"I'm sorry," Stacy said.

"For what?" Anna asked. "For missing your grandmother? I miss mine. But she didn't have a nice teapot like this one." Anna looked down at the teapot still in Stacy's hand. Stacy laughed through her crying.

"Gram was a classy lady," Stacy said. "She's been gone a while. I don't know what came over me. I guess it was just seeing a pot like this, you know?"

Anna nodded. "I know. Objects can do that to us. You want a minute by yourself?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Stacy said. "I'm good. Really, I am." She turned and put the teapot back onto the shelf with care. "Just one of those things."

"Need to go home? I can do this."

"No, Anna, really, I wanna stay and help." Stacy wiped tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. "Just hadn't thought about Gram in a while."

The two ladies unstacked the trunks, most of which seemed to be empty, and pulled out the one that had been on the bottom of the pile. It said, "toy swords" on the side, but when Anna opened it, the trunk was empty. She shook her head and removed the sign.

For a few minutes they counted toy swords in silence until Stacy spoke up. "I still think it's a bit much sometimes, but I get it now. Why they like to have all sorts of choices for their shows."

"What made you change your mind?"

"Gram's teapot. I guess a play is more powerful if it's got little touches that give people the feels. Any old teapot might work, but maybe an audience thinks of their Gram when they see an actor using that one."

Anna nodded. "Like I said, objects do that do us. We don't have room for everything down here, and we probably do keep a little too much. But the more little things we can do with a show, the more people we can touch. We hope, anyway."

Stacy nodded and turned her attention to another trunk nearby. "Shall we see what this one is?" Anna nodded. Stacy opened the trunk, and gasped.

"What?" asked Anna.

"Well, we have five of...these." Stacy spun the trunk around.

Anna grimaced as she looked down onto five identical ceramic clown heads. They looked up at her through dull, cracked eyes above their faded-paint red sneers and moth-eaten red collars.

"I won't judge, though," Stacy said. "Like I said, the power of theater lies in the details. I'm sure it's good to have more than one creepy glass clown head."

"No," Anna said. "Not at all. There's no damn reason in the world anybody anywhere should have these."
Living Ghosts

You stand right outside the front door, lingering on the sidewalk. You've not stepped inside the Little Dionysus Playhouse for over a year. Plenty has gone on within its walls in the mean time, but your memories and the surroundings intersect in such a way that the sensations of the past override the present. It's as though the entire building is locked in a time capsule you're about to open.

Work shifts and schedules changed with your new job last year, leaving little time for theater. But now that your schedule has evened out, your friend asked you to teach a one-day workshop, and here you are again at last.

You're anxious to see the place again. There is just something about this particular community playhouse.

But you must engage the ghosts. The ghosts of the living. The ghosts that linger within a theater after a show closes. The ghosts born of emotional, dramatic, passionate people calling it a second home for six to eight weeks at a time. Even ghosts of your former self.

This isn't unique to you. You've discussed it with other actors before. The "psychic imprint" one colleague calls it. "Reflective vibe," says another. A show lingers in invisible ways after it closes, and psychological remnants of your most recent show permeate the building like a mist. Happens to you every time. The longer you've been away, the more potent it is, and the longer it takes to recede.

Today it's not so bad at first. You enter through the lobby for a change. As an actor you've never spent a great deal of time in here; you usually enter and exit through the back. That's where you know it will hit you hardest.

You check the clock. You've got about 30 minutes before your workshop starts, so you pass into the house of the theater. The set for the current show is assembled but not painted. Set pieces and furniture are in place. Probably the last week or two of rehearsals, you figure.

In the last year, there hasn't been much of a chance for you to even watch any shows here. So your last memory of this stage is of sweeping it clean. That was one of your assigned jobs during strike on closing day. You remember that even then, living ghosts of the show had already begun to show up. As you swept, you found yourself stepping over the tricky throw rug everyone in the show had tripped over. The throw rug that wasn't even on stage anymore by that point.

But you've always found a stage crowded with weaker ghosts. A stage is used so much and changes so often, it's more difficult to home in on a specific memory. The real "ghost" encounters start as soon as you step into the small hallway near the front of the house. The one with "The Funnel" painted on the inside. The one that leads both backstage, and to the green room.

There's a young woman here, chatting on a cell phone, probably involved in your workshop. She nods at you and steps out of your way. You resist the fruitless urge to warn her that she's standing in Lenny's preferred meditation spot. (One of your unofficial "duties" during your last show.)

At the other end of the hallway you step through the open door into the green room. For the briefest of moments, in a small corner of your mind you're convinced that if you walked back to the dressing rooms right now, you'd find Aaron still fiddling with his hair in an attempt to get it perfect, and never quite doing so.

You think of the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment that your brother is obsessed with. You wonder if, so long as you stay outside of the dressing rooms Aaron is both still there, and not there anymore at the same time. Maybe the analogy doesn't work after all.

You meander around the green room for a bit. This room that takes on a different feel for every show and every cast. Yet it's always somehow the same.

You gravitate toward the coffee table near the center of the room. You look at it out of the corner of your eye, and can see the chessboard and pieces set up. It's Rob's move. You've beaten him three times in a row in your little intermission lightning chess challenges. Looking at the table head on now, you see only a stack of books, not a chess board.

And is there still a trace of that perfume what's-her-name spilled lingering in the air in here? Or is that another living ghost? You decide this time it could actually go either way; the stuff was pretty strong, and there was a lot of it all over the floor that night.

The clock in the green room reveals you have 20 minutes before your workshop. You make your way to a rack of costumes pulled for the current show. One by one you slide the hangers over the rack, each one with a name hastily written on a piece of masking tape. "Terry" "Bruce" "Serena." Under each name tag are scores of old ones, their browning, curling edges still visible. Perhaps one of them is yours?

You recognize none of these names, but one of "Serena's" dresses makes you pause. You don't know dresses or fashion, and you couldn't describe this frock to anyone, other than "green" and "soft". But you know women. Women with curves and class. Women like Elizabeth, who wore this exact dress in that show a year ago.

Elizabeth. How curious she wasn't the first thing you thought of when you stepped back into the green room. Shouldn't her ghost have been the most potent? Perhaps it's so potent you blocked it out for a while. Or perhaps it was a ghost you exorcised when she moved away. But seeing this dress retrieves her ghost for now.

You glide your hand down the fuzzy back of the dress. Your fingers linger on the zipper she asked you, of all people, to zip up for her each night before her scene. Someone else would zip it down for her when you were on stage, but you recall with something that's almost a smile that you removed her actual clothing on two (and only two) cold nights near the end of the run. You both knew that your "arrangement" would be as temporary as the show you were in. Still, it was kind of her to send you a farewell email when she got the job halfway across the country. You haven't gotten an email from her since, but somehow that one email and seeing this dress again is enough.

Of course you're aware of how ridiculous it is to resent this "Serena" for daring to wear this dress for whatever show is happening now. Ridiculous, but true. This is Elizabeth's dress. If you stood here long enough, would you hear her running down The Funnel now to snatch it from the rack on her way to the tiny dressing rooms? Would you catch your breath one last time in anticipation of the shared, secret flirtation between the two of you as you put your hand on her back while you zipped her up?

You don't find out. You cover Elizabeth's dress with the clothing in front of it, and step away from the rack. It may be a good idea to go over your remarks for the workshop, with just 15 minutes remaining before it begins. You look around, and dance with your own ghost for a bit by studying your notes at the same end table where you always studied your big monologue for that show last year. The first few words of that monologue graze gently over your tongue even all this time later as you clear the small end table and spread your note cards in front of you.

You decided days ago that the body of the lecture was fine. And you've got a killer conclusion before the Q&A. But how to open?

In a whisper, you read from your notes, imagining the students in front of you.

"Welcome to this talk about building a character, which you will find is the keystone to any great performance."

It sounds worse out loud than it looks on paper. And it looks terrible on paper. You reach into your pocket for your pen, and scratch out the line, the fourth such opening line you've scribbled over on the worn index card. You scratch a few more words down, feeling the muscles in your neck tense as the deadline for the class approaches.

"We all create art every day," you whisper, testing out a new opening. "It's all a matter of knowing you do it, and doing it on purpose."

The sentiment is true, you concede, but you don't think it could have been presented in a cornier fashion. You tap your pen on the table top faster and faster until you manage to annoy yourself with the racket, and stop.

Then you hear conversation coming from The Funnel. You turn around to find two women in their late 30s chatting, each with notebooks. One of them catches your eye.

"Oh, I'm sorry, hope we didn't disturb you," she says.

"Not at all," you say, getting to your feet.

"Are you here for the character workshop?" asks the other woman.

"I'm here to teach it, yes," you tell them.

The faces of both women light up with what appears to be mild surprise. You wonder if you really look that out of place. You exchange pleasantries with them. Then you excuse yourself to the bathroom in the lobby. It's further away than the bathroom near the dressing rooms, but you don't have to use it anyway.

Precious minutes later you watch yourself in the lobby bathroom mirror for a few moments, digging into your own mind for something, anything that will serve as an opening for this talk. These were adults, you reason, and probably would be more patient than kids or teens. Still, a weak opening to your remarks could set the wrong tone for the whole presentation. Speech-giving 101.

You mouth a few more half-hearted new openings. You even squint through the frantic ink scratches on your card to give the dismissed openings another shot. As the clock indicates you've got five minutes, you opt to go back to the corny "making art" opening, for want of anything better.

You check your hair, your teeth and your nose in the mirror. You step out of the men's room back through the lobby and eventually all the way back to the green room. You notice the woman with the phone is no longer standing in Lenny's backstage spot. A speck of you appreciates that.

Eight to ten people are here in the green room now. Two of them are sitting at the chess table with sandwiches. A trio of the ladies, (two of them being the ones that spoke to you earlier) are sitting on the ratty couch where Laura would catch a quick nap before rehearsal began. The rest are spread throughout the room, gathered in closely. All of them look toward you as you bid the group good morning.

"Welcome to this character-creation workshop," you begin. The corny line about art is on the tip of your tongue when you happen to glance over to the costume rack, and catch a bit of Elizabeth's dress sticking out from the rest of the clothing. You pause as a thought comes to your mind; Elizabeth has been there for you one last time.

"This building is filled with all sorts of living ghosts for me," you tell the group. "Ghosts of living people, who left an imprint with their passions. They fade with time, and with other projects, but they'll always be here. If you do enough theater, you'll see them one day too. In fact, you may just leave a few of them here yourself."

They look intrigued.
Accidental Audition

"Thank you. If you could send the next person out that would be great."

Arthur made a few marks in his director's notebook. When he looked back up at the stage, the actor who'd just concluded his audition was still standing there. "Was there something else?" Arthur asked.

"Did you have a specific person you wanted to come out next or..."

"No just hand find the next one trying out and send them in please."

The actor left for the green room.

Arthur had arrived late that morning. He'd hastily scattered the audition material in the green room. Because he had nobody there to help him with auditions, he'd written the instructions for what to do in thick marker on a piece of poster board. Nobody had yet understood it. Perhaps they hadn't even read it.

Already he was wearing too many hats for this show. He hadn't been able to find anybody to be a stage manager, since his usual choice was in college for the semester. He was on his own, and it was grinding his nerves into powder.

A young woman made her awkward way onto the stage, and he sighed. He'd meant for the next person in line reading for the lead male role to come in, not just the next random person. Probably should have said that to the outgoing actor. But he didn't.

"I take it you aren't here to read for Anthony?" Arthur asked.

The young woman looked behind her and then at her script. "No," she said, brushing something off of her unzipped raggedy hoody. "No, he just said..."

"That's my fault. Just give me a minute, and let me find my copy of Samantha's lines."

Arthur shuffled through papers, half of which fell to the floor. He sighed and pulled out a small set of pages stapled together.

"All right, and what is your name?" he asked the girl.

"Lisa," she said. "Burton."

"Lisa, let's take a look at Samantha's first speech on page..."

"Did you want my audition sheet?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I'll take it, thank you."

Arthur eased himself out of his front row seat and removed the sheet from the girl's hand. He skimmed it, and bit his tongue. No previous theater experience. He'd hit the losers jackpot with those today. He sat back down and regurgitated his same tired speech.

"I see you have no experience. Don't be nervous, I'm just trying to asses where you would best fit into the show. If you don't get in I hope you won't be discouraged."

"Thank you," she said. "I saw that on the poster board in the green room."

At least somebody had read it.

"Yes, well," Arthur said, "if you could just start at the first page, right as Samantha enters and confronts her sister."

"How do I know, I mean when do I stop reading? On the last page?"

"Just keep going until I stop you, please."

"Okay."

This Lisa stood on the stage in her hoody and jeans looking towards Arthur. The stage lights reflected off of the thick lenses of her stout eyewear. When she moved ever so slightly to the left, still saying nothing, the reflection caught Arthur in the eye and he had to squint.

After another moment of silence, Arthur called up to her. "You can start anytime you want to."

"Oh, okay, thank you."

Lisa flew off stage before Arthur had a chance to protest. He rested his head in his hand and waited. A moment later he jumped as Lisa exploded onto the stage, covering her face with the script as she vomited forth Samantha's lines.

She almost tripped once as she lumbered back and forth on the stage, her face behind the script. She corrected herself and somehow stayed on her feet, but she lost her place in the script and after some muttering to herself resumed the speech. Every few minutes the light reflecting from her glasses thrust-and-parried itself in a small, luminescent oval all over the semi-dark house as though it were a warlike fairy doing battle with an unseen enemy.

After a two minute span stretched to its absolute limit by pauses, lost places, and wild gesticulations, Lisa at last removed the script from her face, and let it rest by her side. She panted and her glasses reflected the light back at him. He squinted and looked at her a moment.

"All right," he said at last. "How about we have you read as Judy this time. I'll read Samantha's lines."

"Okay."

"By the way, do you ever wear contacts?"

Lisa put her hand up to the bridge of the glasses as she spoke. "Well, contacts dry out my eyes. I think. I mean they always did. Maybe I could find a different kind if that would help. If that would look better. Do you think I should? Should I get some and come back and read with them another day?"

"No, no," Arthur said. "No, we don't need to do that. What if you didn't wear the glasses?"

"I can't see two feet in front of me."

Somehow that seemed inevitable to him. He nodded. Lisa said nothing the entire time, only looked down at him. "Let's have you read the sister's lines now, shall we?"

He went through the page of simple dialogue with her twice, offering suggestions as to how to improve after the first. He spent a little extra time on her audition. He often did that with those who had no chance, so it didn't feel so obvious to them they had no chance. Lisa was probably the worst he'd seen all day. Truth be told she was probably the worst he'd seen in several years at the LDP.

"Thank you for trying out today, Lisa," he said, another pat response. "I should be in touch with everyone within the week, one way or the other. You can send the next person in now."

"Thanks. And do you mean the next person to read for Samantha, or just the next person there?"

"Actually, if you'd be willing to ask around for the next guy reading for Anthony and send him back, that would be great, thank you. I need to use the bathroom, but please let everybody know I will be back in a moment."

"Okay, thanks again."

"Thank you," he said as he made his way up the aisle toward the bathrooms in the lobby.

When he came back to the house, a college-aged man with an unkempt beard sat on the stage holding papers. Arthur greeted the would-be actor. "Sorry for keeping you waiting, I've been at this all morning."

"It's cool, man, no worries," said the beard.

"You're reading for Anthony, right?"

"Yep."

"I just need a minute to gather these papers here and find the right section."

"No problem."

Arthur lowered himself onto the floor and picked up the stacks of paper that he'd dropped just before Lisa's audition. He grunted his way back into a standing position and reached out his hand toward the bearded guy.

"I'll take your audition sheet now," Arthur said. The guy handed him a stack of about 15 papers.

"Mine's on top," the beard said.

"What are all of these for then?" Arthur asked, flipping through the stack.

"Um, yeah, that's everybody's audition sheet," said the Beard. "Everybody back there. This one chick was looking for all the guys who wanted to play Anthony, so she just collected everybody's sheet and put them in order by the characters they want to read for. All the Anthonys on top so you can just ask for the next dude by name."

Arthur looked down at the pages. It was as the beard said...they were arranged by character all the way down to those who only wanted a bit part.

"Who did this again?" Arthur asked.

"Some chick with a hoody on and glasses. She was kind of cute, I think she read before me. She straightened up the scripts in the green room too."

Arthur excused himself and made his way from the front row and down the skinny hallway that led to the green room. When he emerged on the other side, he saw five piles of scripts neatly stacked on the folding table he'd hastily set up that morning. A piece of scrap paper on top of each stack had the name of a character scribbled onto it.

"Are you here to audition?" asked a middle aged-woman in a sweater. "Scripts are arranged by character, and we all sort of broke off into groups for each character to run lines with each other."

"Is the girl in the hoody still here?" Arthur asked. "The one that set up these little piles?"

"I don't think so," said the woman. "She just sort of threw all of this together and left."

"Need to find her sheet," Arthur said as he turned back into the hallway. When he got back into the house, the Beard was reading lines to himself. Arthur ignored him and he shuffled through the mess of papers he'd left on his seat. At last he found Lisa's. He apologized to the Beard again and made his way to the lobby with Lisa's sheet. In the light, he pulled out his cell phone and entered Lisa's number. She answered, sounding uncertain.

"Lisa, it's Arthur Garrick from the Little Dionysus Playhouse. I was thinking about your audition a minute ago. I know you said you don't know anything about theater, but you know what a stage manager is, right?"
Story Summit

Four teenagers, part of the new summer workshop program at the Little Dionysus Playhouse, were gathered in a thin passageway at the theater. It was their first day at the workshop and none of them had been to the playhouse before. All four of them looked up now at some words painted high up on one of the walls of this passageway.

"The Funnel," it said, in faded blue paint.

"Maybe it means to funnel your creativity toward the stage," said the smallest of the quartet, a scrawny student in a golf shirt and blue jeans.

"But it doesn't point to the stage, you know?" asked the girl in the baseball cap as she once again removed someone's hand from her shoulder.

"Maybe it used to," said he with the wandering hands, the tallest of the group. "It's an old building, probably been rebuilt a couple of times over the years."

The kid in the golf shirt spoke again. "Maybe the guy running the workshop will tell us."

"Are you going to ask?" asked Ball Cap Girl.

Golf Shirt looked at her and shrugged. "I don't know. I mean I guess I could, if you like."

"Or I can, it doesn't bother me to ask, I just didn't want to if you were going to," said Ball Cap.

"Whatever," Golf Shirt said.

"It's not even shaped like a funnel," said the quiet girl in overalls who hadn't spoken until then. "It's just a hallway. Rectangular."

"You sound like my geometry teacher," said Hands.

"You behave like a molester," said Quiet Girl.

"Come on, now," said Hands, but Ball Cap interrupted. "Can we just keep moving? We can talk about this in the other room."

The group moved through the door at the end of this "Funnel" and into the green room of the playhouse. No other students had arrived yet.

Ball Cap sat down on a worn out sofa that looked ready to collapse any moment. She stood up and moved right away to a nearby chair when Hands sat down next to her.

"Do you two even know each other?" asked Golf Shirt.

"Sadly, yes," said Ball Cap. "In another life we dated."

"Awkward," said Quiet Girl.

"Just because you've never got felt up, doesn't mean nobody else gets to be," said Hands to Quiet Girl.

"Maybe I prefer to be felt up by men as opposed to boys," said Quiet Girl.

"All right, enough," said Golf Shirt. "Is it gonna be five weeks of this? Can we just chill, please?" After nobody said anything for a minute, he spoke up again. "The Funnel...who would paint that up there?"

It was quiet a moment as Hands moved to the opposite side of the room and made to sit down on a chair. He looked at it, had second thoughts, and switched to another.

"But why hasn't it been painted over?" asked Quiet Girl. "It must mean something important to this place or else they'd have cleaned it off, right?"

"Well, maybe not," said Ball Cap. "Audiences don't get to go in there during the show. That one sign said 'Actors Only Beyond This Point'. Maybe they figure nobody ever sees in there, so why go through the effort? Why waste the paint to fix it?"

"Why waste our time?" asked Hands. "Do we really care why somebody painted a bunch of words up there?"

"Maybe you don't," said Ball Cap. "But some of us are deeper than that."

"Seriously you two," said Golf Shirt. "Can we keep the spats out of it? I'm trying to think creatively here. Now the syllabus said we should be ready to do that for this workshop, so let's do it already."

"Lead us then," said Hands. "If you know so much about it."

"Fine, I will," said Golf Shirt. He walked around the room. "Let's think, what do we know? What can we guess?"

"Blue paint," said Ball Cap. "Letters are pretty neat, so maybe an artist painted them."

"I like that," said Golf Shirt.

"Must have meant something," said Quiet Girl. "Nobody could reach that high and paint that well without a ladder or something. Took some effort."

"Yeah, good point," said Ball Cap. "So an artist takes the time to grab a stool or something, and a bucket of paint, and paints "The Funnel" high up on a wall in a hallway."

"Cool," said Golf Shirt. "But why does an artist call a hallway a funnel?"

"Maybe he wasn't," said Hands. All of them looked in his direction.

"What do you mean?" asked Ball Cap.

"I mean," said Hands in a mocking voice, "that 'the Funnel' might be talking about something else. He didn't have to mean the hallway just because he painted it there."

"Yeah, true," said Golf Shirt.

"I still think it was the hallway itself," said Ball Cap. Quiet Girl agreed.

"But you don't know, do you?" asked Hands.

Golf Shirt opened his notebook and pulled out a paper. "This syllabus they sent us," he said. "Says one of our first activities will be to get in groups and make up a story sometime today, based on an object. Let's get ahead and do it now about those words."

All agreed and Golf Shirt continued. "Says we're supposed to let each person tell a part of the story based on the object. How about we start with you?" He indicated Hands.

Ball Cap huffed and Quiet Girl rolled her eyes. But Hands stood up and looked at both of them a moment. "Okay then," he began. "Like I said, the dude that painted it didn't mean the hallway itself. Not at first. He's a painter, and artist, and somebody wants him to do something. Break the rules over something. So he does this graffiti thing to say 'up yours' to the rules."

Hands paused, nodded, and sat back on the couch.

"But why break the rules?" asked Ball Cap. "What's he do that for?"

"Love," said Quiet Girl. All eyes on her as she looked at the floor. "He wouldn't normally do something like that, but he does it for love. Something about who he loves. It means something to both of them."

"An inside thing," said Golf Shirt as he resumed pacing. "We don't know what it is. Nobody knew but the painter and the woman he loved."

"Or the man," said Ball Cap, extending an open palm into the air. "Artist could have been a woman. Or you know, they both could have been men or women."

Golf Shirt nodded. "Fair enough."

Hands sniffed but said nothing.

"Looks like it's been there a while," Quiet Girl said. "Back then you probably couldn't be openly gay, right?"

"Not even in a theater?" asked Golf Shirt.

"Probably not in a community theater," Ball Cap said. She shook her head. "Not if it was like 50 years ago or something, you know?"

The group said nothing for a moment. Golf Shirt paced. Ball Cap leaned back on the couch. Hands closed his eyes and rubbed his knees. Quiet Girl tilted her head to the side.

"Code," said Hands. "If this dude was gay or something, and he'd have to keep it secret, maybe he paints the words on that wall as a code. A message to his gay lover or something. Don't know what those words might mean to a flame, but..."

"Will you just grow up?" Ball Cap snapped. "And don't call them flames, you ass."

"Hey, I'm the one who came up with the idea, not you," Hands snapped back.

"Let's say it's a code," Golf Shirt called out over the developing spat. "Code for what? If it's a message for his lover, what does it mean?"

"I love you," Quiet Girl said. "Or at least 'remember me'. Like I said, it's a pretty bold thing to do."

"And it's still there, after all this time," Golf Shirt said. "So somebody who was in charge must have never let anybody paint over it. It must have been important to them too. Maybe whoever was in charge was the painter's lover. There was gay discrimination then, so maybe he was banned from the theater, and left that little code for the guy in charge to remember him by."

"Yeah, except if some gay a long time ago was in charge of this place, he could just let his lover stay," Hands said.

"Could be the Board of Directors," said Quiet Girl. "They forced his hand. That's not as interesting a story though, if you ask me."

"Well the gay painter had to leave for some reason, didn't he?" asked Hands. "Isn't that what we're going for?"

"War," said Ball Cap. "Maybe the painter or his lover has to go off to war, and leaves that up there to honor him. Any wars 50 years ago?"

"Vietnam," said Quiet Girl. "Early Vietnam."

Ball Cap sunk back into her chair. "Yeah. That's kind of cheap though, Vietnam."

"What do you mean, cheap?" asked Hands. "My uncle was in that war, you know."

"I don't mean the people who fought it were cheap," answered Ball Cap. "I mean for our story it doesn't seem to fit. Like it's too rushed, I don't know. I don't wanna say romantic, because that's kind of sick when it comes to war, but..."

"Why not romantic?" asked Golf Shirt. "What's wrong with that? We're creating characters and a story. Drama is important. If another war suits the story better, I'm cool with that."

"World War II then," said Quiet Girl. "If any war was ever noble, it was probably that one. Just say the paint's been there 70 years or something. We don't actually know how long, anyway."

"Yeah," said Golf Shirt. "I think the theater website said something about this place closing for a few years during the war."

Hands stood up and put his hands in his pockets. "So this gay dude paints the words on the wall out there just before this place closes up because of World War II. And when they open it back up after the war is over, somebody finds it."

"The manager or president of the theater, whatever the title is" said Ball Cap. She stood up. "He was too old to go to war, but his lover wasn't."

"The lover never comes back," said Quiet Girl. "The older man knows the message is for him and doesn't let anybody paint over it. By the time he's gone too, people are used to it."

"So it stays up there, until people forget what it even means," said Golf Shirt.

"And now it's just like some kind of tradition, and nobody messes with it anymore," said Hands.

Again they were quiet a moment.

"I would totally read a novel about that," said Ball Cap.

"Or in this case, maybe see a play about it?" asked Golf Shirt.

Ball Cap nodded.

"Me too," said Quiet Girl, in her quietest voice yet. The others didn't notice, but she pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, and began to write vigorously.

"I'd see it, I guess," said Hands. "But I think I'd also wanna try being in it. In the play."

"You, in a play like that?" asked Ball Cap with a laugh. "You in any play?"

"I'm here aren't I?" asked Hands. "I'm not sure about playing the gay, but I like doing stuff that's difficult to do. Or what's the point?"

"There is none," said Quiet Girl. Hands looked over at her for a brief moment, nodded, and leaned back in his chair.

The door to the Funnel opened. In stepped a few more people their age with a man older than they were, in his 30's or so. Average height or a little less. One hand carried a folder and the other was in his pocket. He wore blue jeans and a solid black shirt. He walked to the middle of the room.

"If we're all ready, I'd like to get started for today, if you please," he said. "I'm Matt and I despise silly introduction games, so if it doesn't bother you too much," he pulled a sheet of sticky name tags out of his folder, "I'd like you to make use of these, please."

The group of teens began writing their names and peeling off their stickers one by one as the instructor kept talking.

"There's a bit of drama in every thing you can see," the instructor said. "Find the story behind it. Make it human. Humanity is lurking somewhere behind everything, you just have to find it. And in theater if you can't find it, you create it. You make it up, if you have to. Make sense?"

"Total sense," said Golf Shirt. As the instructor continued talking, three out of the seven teens looked at Golf Shirt and nodded at him.
Sound of Serendipity

"I'm not arrogant," he told me as I followed him up the spiral metal staircase to the light and sound booths. "People come to shows to see actors perform, period. I'm afraid any techie who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves."

At the top of the enclosed stairs we passed through a door into the lighting booth, and then into the adjacent sound booth. I'd been assistant sound designer for the show for a week and this was the first time I'd actually been up there. It overlooked the stage from an elevated position in the back of the house. A mixer board with rows of levers all labeled with white masking tape that had yellowed with time sat on the desk. So did a functional but outdated computer. He sat down and typed on it.

He was Dennis, sound designer extraordinaire for many productions at the Little Dionysus Playhouse and other community theaters. He typed with just one hand, and ran the fingers of his other through a long, unruly beard. The sweat on his bald head glistened under the fluorescent lighting.

"Lighting guys think all that matters is light," Dennis said. Everything he said expressed little more than dull amusement. "Set designers think audiences take away nothing more than an impression of what they built. And of course nothing can happen without the all-powerful demigods known as stage managers. Or so they think."

Dennis had still not looked up from the computer, but rather was reading what to me were mere numbers and letters on the computer screen. I assumed he'd get around to explaining them. In fact I assumed he'd get around to teaching me many things about sound production. That's why I volunteered for this show instead of the previous one.

"Dennis is doing the next show," I'd been told. "You'll learn a lot more from him."

So I contacted this Dennis, and a few weeks later was his assistant.

"So what you're saying is," I said, "you don't think your sound design is the most important thing about a play?"

He shook his head. "Maybe the second-most important thing. I lament the plight of the deaf more than that of the blind. The blind cannot see the world, but the deaf are more alone, I think."

He punched one more button, and then gestured me back through the lighting booth. He told me we'd talk more about the soundboard later.

"We internalize what we hear so much more than what we see," Dennis said on our way back down the stairs. "In utero we can hear before we see. Sound is the result of the movement of the universe, and our perception of it. All sound is music, and we're built for music."

I thought he was taking it a bit too far, but I could see his point.

Back down in the house Dennis pulled out a small electronic device that measured some aspect of sound quality he said I didn't have to worry about, so I didn't. Instead I followed him back down the hallway they called The Funnel, (nobody knows why), that led from the house to the green room. Earlier in the day he had set up several microphones in this room.

"I'm not giving up," he said. "I don't believe in the easy way. Or in the electronic way." He spread his arms wide, as though he were trying to hug the entire room. "Somewhere in this room the sound of an angel arriving is waiting to happen. And we, my friend, are going to find it."

The script called for an angel to enter a room while one of the characters slept. The noise, described as "only disturbing enough to rouse someone from sleep, not loud", did not exist in any sound effects collection. And if it had, Dennis wouldn't have used it.

"For sound to capture our imagination," he said, (for about the tenth time since I'd signed on with this show), "it has to be organic. Hands hitting jelly, celery breaking, that's the stuff."

His adherence to an antiquated method of creating sound fascinated me, and eventually I did learn quite a bit from Dennis. But on that day, I just wondered if we would ever get the angel sound.

"Grab stuff. Anything," he told me. "You can't go wrong, just start anywhere. No pre-conceived notions, just anything that will make a lasting sound. First rule of sound engineering: don't be afraid to try anything."

I had fun digging through the random items in the green room. I brought out champagne glasses, a violin with one string, a kazoo, a bag of foreign coins, a metal ruler, a stack of butter knives, and some empty beer bottles. I put them all on the nearby table and Dennis cataloged them.

"I like your style," he said, surveying what I'd brought out, along with a few of the items he himself had pulled from the various shelves and crannies of the green room. "Let's get to it."

"Shouldn't we do all of this in a studio somewhere?" I asked him.

"That's not in the show's budget. Besides, this is a challenge for us. If I'm not challenged, I see little purpose in leaving home."

He nodded towards the champagne glasses as he put on a pair of headphones.

I flicked one of the glasses with my finger. The predictable hollow chime sounded.

"Sounds too much like someone flicking a champagne glass," he said. "We need novelty. Moving on."

I tapped the beer bottles next. Rolled the bag of coins around. Struck the metal ruler with a pen. Tossed the ruler to the floor. (That was an obnoxious noise.) Gave a butter knife the same treatment as the ruler. Banged the ruler with the butter knife and vice-versa. Then back to the beer bottles, rolling them over a table. Then we rolled the champagne glasses.

I had a last minute idea to spin one of the butter knives on the table. This produced a rhythmic white noise accompanied by a slight click as it spun in various cycles. I thought we might have had something when Dennis had me spin the knife again.

After the third spin died down and the knife skidded to a warbling halt, I looked at him. His eyes were closed, and his hands over the earphones he wore. He stayed like that long enough for me to wonder if he was okay. He exhaled at last and declared, "Not quite. I like it, I want to use that for something in the future, but it just isn't angelic, you know?"

If he said so.

He shook his head several times as his gaze passed over the many objects we'd tried.

"Let's go back up to the booth for a while," he said. I detected slight deflation in his voice for the first time. "We'll deal with this later. I want to teach you to run the board."

We called it a day up in the booth about an hour later. We got a lot done, but Dennis seemed slower than before. More distant. He shut off the lights and we passed into the neighboring light booth. He was just passing into the stairway when he stopped and snapped his fingers.

"They asked me to have a look at one of the auxiliary speakers," he said, pointing towards the ceiling. "Up in the catwalk. Are you afraid of heights?"

"No."

"Then would you mind climbing up there? I would, but I get so cramped."

Dennis was a bit heavyset. If I were he, I wouldn't like climbing up into the catwalk either. I agreed to go in his place.

"We just need to make sure it's still bolted down tight," he said. "Someone thought it looked off or something." He pointed to a shelf on the back wall of the light booth. "Grab a flash light and a wrench. It's the first speaker you'll come to on your left up there. Just tighten any loose bolts. I wish they'd just replace it."

I grabbed the needed tools and ascended a small metal ladder that led up into the lighting cat walk. I crawled and clanked my way to the speaker in question. My survey found one loose bolt, which I tightened. I turned around and began my descent back down the ladder.

As my feet hit the first rung I felt the wrench in my back pocket begin to slip. I had no way to contort myself so as to secure it. As I took another rung, I knew it was about escape completely.

"Heads," I shouted down to Dennis. I'd been told that this was the standard (and probably useless) warning in the theater world that something dangerous, or at least painful, was falling to the earth from an elevated position.

I both heard the sound and felt the reverberation of the wrench bounce off of one of the metal ladder's rungs before coming to stop on the floor below.

When I got down to the light booth, I picked up the wrench and started to apologize to Dennis. He wasn't there.

"Don't go anywhere," I heard him call from the stairway.

I looked out of the window of the booth that overlooked the stage and saw him running back toward The Funnel. I shrugged and waited. A few minutes later I saw Dennis come running back through the house with wires, cables and microphones dangling from him like kudzu.

I made sure to stay out of his way as he set up the tiny recording devices all over the light booth.

"The wrench on the ladder," he said to me at last. "It's the sound we're looking for, my friend. That's our angel arriving." He pointed to the ladder. "It was just a little too low. I'm thinking if you stand on a different rung and drop the wrench, we might have what we need. All set?"

And so it was that I spent the next half-hour or so moving up and down on a ladder, testing the sound a wrench made when dropped from various locations. And thus the tiniest spark of inspiration returned to the eyes of a man who otherwise had little to no personality. And thus was born, (eventually) a delightful, otherworldly sound effect that weeks later audiences would spend most of intermission trying to identify.

"First rule of sound engineering," Dennis told me later. "Accidents are better than planning."
Dueling Carols

Christmas Harmony? Two Local Theaters Hit By Flu Combine Their Resources For 'A Christmas Carol'-- by local-interest reporter Dan Mullinix

Two regional community theaters have teamed up to save what would have been a Dickensless holiday season in our area. Due to the flu outbreak, both the Little Dionysus Playhouse and the Prescott Players suffered significant drops in the respective casts of 'A Christmas Carol'. So much so, both productions were well on their way to being canceled as little as two weeks ago.

Enter stage left, Doug Strindberg, Managing Director of the Prescott Players.

"It felt like a real shame to let all that hard work go to waste," he said. "It would've been a shame to not have any Christmas shows in the area, too. And since we were both doing the same script by chance, I thought I'd make a call."

That call was to Doctor Harrison Gruber. Dr. Gruber is the acting president of the LDP while the full time president is recovering from a minor illness.

"It sounded fantastic," Gruber said of the proposed collaboration. "We were hanging on by a thread and they had already canceled their show. The writing was on the wall...we were going to have to cancel our own before long. I was personally treating half of our cast for the flu."

This is not the first time the two community theaters have collaborated. According to both men, their respective companies have often exchanged props and costumes as needed over the years. But this marks the first time the two companies have been joint producers of a play.

"They're what, an hour and a half's drive from here?" Strindberg guessed. "Two hours if highway traffic is bad? We're local to one another, but not exactly neighbors."

Unfortunately for Strindberg, it is his company that will be forced to do most of the driving; it was decided that the actual production would take place at the LDP facility, but under the direction of Stuart Porter, who was set to direct the Prescott Players production.

"One thing I've learned in 40 years of theater," Porter told me, "is that nothing is predictable. Things can shift, and you've got to adjust. I've never directed in this venue before, and it's been sort of a delight exploring a new stage."

*

"Explain this to me," Stu Porter huffed from the house of the Little Dionysus Playhouse, "What kind of a rinky-dink Bush League playhouse has one big long hallway full of gear as the only access point to both the house and the green room?"

"Somebody will hear you," said a rail-thin, white-haired man in an overcoat. "And I keep telling you that there's a back door to the green room."

"From the outside," Porter said through a heavy sigh. It annoyed him to no end. He couldn't get over the design flaw. "It's completely counter-intuitive. Why did I agree to do this again, Manny?"

"Because you're a stubborn mule and you had it in your mind to do this play come hell or high holly," said Manny.

"I'm not being stubborn for god's sake." Porter shot a look into the hallway in question. He was weary of people calling him stubborn. His partner. Actors. The board at the Prescott Players.

"You've bitched about this hallway almost every day since we've started rehearsing here," Manny said. "It's been two weeks already. You're pissing people off."

"How many of my shows have you run lights for?"

"One too many, it would appear," Manny said.

"Twenty three," Porter said. "We've done twenty three shows together, because nobody else understands the lighting nuances I want."

"It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I've done lights in this building before?"

"Do you like this place? I mean do you sincerely think this is a good venue? Just answer me that."

"I like home better," Manny said with a nod. "More intimate there. Lighting board not as complicated. And it's draftier than Prescott." Manny tugged at his overcoat. "I'd run a bit of a tighter ship than management does here. But it's not like home is a palace either, be fair. We're all on the same team in the end, aren't we?"

"That remains to be seen," Porter said. Truth be told he had started to regret his decision to do this almost from the first day he'd toured the place with Dr. Gruber. It wasn't by any means the worst place he'd worked in. The LDP had its strengths. Yet it didn't seem to have any character. Any class. It was just...there.

And that hallway...he'd love to just tear the back half of the building down and start over. Or grab the nearest roller and cover up that 'The Funnel' lettering. It was like a shrine in this place for some reason. He'd never seen vandalism held in such high esteem.

But he wasn't about to let someone else direct the actors he'd already broken in. If the show had to be at the LDP, he was going to make damn sure they all knew he was in charge.

"Come," he said, and motioned into the hallway for Manny to follow him. "Let us enter 'The Funnel' or whatever the hell it is. And be sure to genuflect as you do so."

*

Exploring new stages and venues is what George Alistair is all about. Alistair plays the title role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the notorious literary skinflint. He retained his role after the merger.

"I've performed on I'd guess about 80% of the community stages around here," he said. "A few of them aren't even there anymore, sadly. I'd have been ready to go to Prescott if we had to. I've been there before. That's what you do. You find a way to be true to your character no matter where you are. You've got a job to do and you do it."

The 80 year old actor has been doing it for over 50 years, and embarks on his fifth Ebenezer Scrooge among unusual circumstances in this joint production. He called it, "an adventure".

"George...is not only a great talent, but he possesses an ease of personality, a gentleness that I envy," Dr. Gruber said of the production's star. "He's been in many of our shows recently because he lives closest to us, and it's getting harder for him to travel, so he says. But he couldn't be less like Scrooge if he tried. Warmest, most patient actor I've seen on our stage."

*

George Alistair muttered to himself in the dressing room as he read the written notes from the director. He shook his head several times and turned to the actor who played Scrooge's nephew. The young man, a regular at that other theater, was applying make-up.

"How do you work with this man all the time?" George asked. "One of the most pompous, micro-managing directors I've ever had to deal with." He shook the page of notes at the boy. "Is he like that with everyone?"

"I kind of like it," said the boy, adjusting his ascot. "Keeps me sharp, ready for anything. I do better if I'm told only what I'm doing wrong. Forces me to improve."

George made to say something, but instead dropped the sheet on the counter and exited the dressing room. "Fool," he said under his breath as he made his way down the short dressing room hallway. He passed through a small swinging door and out into the green room.

The stage manager, another import, handed him another piece of paper as he walked by without a word. George looked down at it. More notes. He'd only just been handed the first page 20 minutes ago.

"Absurd," George said, as he made his way through the green room and out through The Funnel to the house to have a word with Mr. Porter.

The director, or as George called him "The Usurper" was sitting on the front row of seats in the house talking with his lighting designer. For anyone else George would have waited until the conversation was over, or at least at a pause. But enough was enough. "You want my scowl to be more organic? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Porter looked up from his discussion with the light designer. "I'm in the middle of something right now, George. We'll talk about it later."

"I was in the middle of something when I got this," George told him, irritation building but manageable. "Actually I was in the middle of something both times in the last half an hour when I got your notes. They're so important? I need to know right now what the hell they mean."

"I'll just go check on those gels," said the lighting designer, who then made his way up the aisle toward the entrance to the lighting booth.

"I can't have these kind of interruptions, George. Just because you're the lead in the show..."

"Don't insult me with that sermon," George said. "I had my first lead before you had your first tooth, probably. I know how it works, and let me tell you it doesn't work well with all of this micromanaging." George shook the paper with Porter's latest notes on it.

Porter took a deep breath, and folded his hands. He leaned back in his seat. George felt as though he was being treated like a rebellious child.

"Organic means natural," Porter said. "Not artificial. Nothing added or subtracted."

"I can define it," George said. His face felt hot now. "Twenty-five years as a high school English teacher allowed me to pick up a thing or two about words here and there."

Porter blinked, but continued. "My point was, the way you scowl has a certain painted-on quality. I'd like to see it come out of Scrooge's soul. Something natural. I want it to be inevitable that Scrooge would look exactly like that. Right now you look like an actor that painted a scowl on his face."

George thought Porter should see what an actor delivering a right hook to the jaw looked like. But he refrained as he listened to the Usurper claw his way through an explanation of how he envisioned the character. Just as he had done every single day since he took over.

None of it applied to what George was doing at all, of course, and none of it ever would. His best bet was to simply ignore all of it, and perform the role as he always had. He should have ignored the notes he was given, in fact. But this man had tried his patience.

George took pride in the fact that at least nobody else in the production had any sense that he was angry. At least he was still hiding it well.

*

" _There's no reason to not be professional, just because this is a volunteer project," George Alistair told me, a smile on his face. "And when something like this happens, it's extra important to get along with everybody, to not let little things stir you up. We're all in this one together...it has taken some adjustment with half the cast being new in the last few days, but I can't say I'm unhappy about any of it very much."_

While George's overall optimism is shared by most of the cast and crew, not everyone sees the production as worry-free. Jeanette Gold,(Ghost of Christmas Past, Beggar # 2, Coffin Bearer #4) is a regular at the Prescott Players but a first-timer at the LDP. She confesses the sudden change of venue and personnel has made her more than a little nervous.

"This whole thing has taken a bit of a toll on my sleep, I can't lie," Gold said. "You get into a groove and boom, suddenly everything changes. It's been exhausting at times. Not that I'd ever quit a show." Gold went to pains to make that point, describing appendicitis as the only time she resigned a part in a show. "So nothing like that happened here thankfully," she added. "I'm just a creature of habit."

Gold, 26, is well known for a rather complex pre-show ritual within the Prescott community. When we asked her about it, she laughed. "It's terrible, I know. But I need to get into my zone before a show. Over at the Prescott, about half an hour before each performance, I hang upside down on this thick metal bar that runs the length of the green room. I stay like that, and don't talk to anyone for 15 minutes or so, right there in the middle of the room." Gold laughed again, and with some prodding continued. "Then I get down, scream into whatever the nearest pillow is, and go about my business. It's sort of a performance all its own. It's quite something when people see it for the first time."

Gold turned serious a moment when asked how she would prepare for her performances at the LDP, which has no such metal bar in its greenroom.

"I'm a bit nervous about that," she said. "Again, I will never quit a show for something like that, but I have to wonder what it's going to be like for a performance without that ritual. I've already gone through rehearsals without it, and it's been no small burden. Hopefully performances won't be any worse without my bar. I've been okay so far, but hopefully I won't get too tense."

*

With only 15 minutes left before curtain, Jeannette told herself it was probably time for her to put on the rest of her make up. She didn't make her first appearance on stage until about a half an hour after the show started, but she'd had to rush the last time. By now, she'd pinned her hair up, and had gotten into her ghost costume before planting herself once again in the dilapidated easy chair in the green room she'd claimed as her own each night. Her claims were easily won, as nobody else wanted anything to do with the chair.

It was a horrid thing. Peeling. Taped in a few places. It creaked a bit whenever she moved in it. A few people theorized the noise meant the chair would break at any moment. She was inclined to agree, but couldn't bring herself to care; it was without a doubt the most comfortable place to sit in the entire green room. It may have even be more comfortable than anything at the Prescott.

"Can somebody help me with this thing, please? I can't get my arm around far enough."

A teen actress, attempting to zip her own clumsy faux-Victorian dress was working herself into a bit of a panic. Jeanette pulled herself out of her chair. "Over here, babe, let me take a look."

The teen scooted over to her, and turned her back to Jeannette.

"That's a weird clasp, isn't it?" she asked the teen.

"I know right?" the teen said. "I wasn't even sure how it worked when it was hanging on the rack."

Jeannette fiddled with the small apparatus until she finally got things going. "Looks to me like it was a lazy repair at some point that nobody corrected. There," Jeannette stepped back. "you're set. Might see if the costume lady can do something about that. If not, look for me each night. I'll be in that chair probably. Love that chair."

The teen smiled, thanked her and went off.

"Ten minutes until curtain everyone," the stage manager called out to the crowded green room. "That's ten."

Jeannette, like all of the other self-respecting actors in the green room thanked the stage manager for the warning with "Thank you for ten." Afterwards, many people began moving around a bit faster. Jeannette merely looked over at her chair and sighed. She made her way to the back of the green room and through a swinging door that led to the dressing rooms. She hummed Jingle Bells and dodged people in a greater hurry than herself as she did so.

She found the ladies dressing room almost full, with one seat available in front of the mirrors. She thought about waiting a few more minutes, but decided she'd probably frittered away more time than she should have already. She sat down, reached for her make-up, and smiled at the nice woman who played Mrs. Cratchit. Then she began her transformation.

Gradually, as Jeanette's face became whiter through each application, the dressing room became less crowded. One by one the people needed in the first few scenes flew out of the room. By the time Jeannette had painted her nose, the stage manager had given the five-minute warning. By the time the stage-manager called for places, Jeannette was fully made up, and wearing her long, blonde Ghost of Christmas Past wig.

She had half an hour or so before she entered. She regretted getting ready as early as she had. She sat for a few minutes listening to the actors on stage through the tiny speaker above the door of the dressing room. (She wished Prescott had those things.) She yawned and stood up to leave. As she did, something caught her eye under all of the make up, water bottles, candy and other items crammed onto the dressing room counter. She thought it was just a phone at first, but it looked too big. She moved a few papers and saw it was a video game. One of the old time video games. Self contained, pocket sized. Not connected with a phone at all.

"Football Fury," she said out loud. She pressed the button, and smiled at the archaic beeping and music that issued forth from the device. She fumbled with the buttons on the small control pad for a few moments. By the time Scrooge had told his nephew to go away, Jeannette was completing a pass up the middle, and found herself on the 30 yard line. She thought about taking the game out to her chair in the green room, but it didn't feel right to take someone else's stuff out of the dressing room. It didn't even feel right to be playing it. But she did, and rather enjoyed doing so. Carefully so as not to damage her costume, she stretched her legs across an empty chair next to her, and decided to go with a running play on third and two.

She wouldn't get a whole game in before she had to be on stage. Maybe a half. She decided that if she was leading at halftime, that would count as a win under these conditions.

*

"I just have to stay focused," Gold said. "We all do, so we don't let the extra stress get to us. Have to remind myself constantly that I should be having fun. That's not in my nature, but I've been trying."

Everyone involved with the show, it seems, has been trying. One solution to make it all worth it, according to both Dr. Gruber and Mr. Strindberg, is to make sure the crowds are big. And while any version of A Christmas Carol is a perennial best seller in virtually all English-speaking theaters, the two theater leaders were faced with the particular difficulty of directing the traffic of one theater to the other.

The campaign appears to have worked. According to Dr. Gruber advanced ticket sales for opening night this Friday are on pace to have very close to a full house, and anyone who wants tickets to the show is advised to call ahead and reserve them as soon as possible.

*

"Anybody else talk to that goofy reporter from the Bugle a few days ago?" asked George Alistair to the actors resting in the green room during the intermission for dress rehearsal.

"I did," offered Jeannette Gold, as she reclined in the derelict chair only she seemed to want to sit in. She plugged away at a small electronic game as she spoke. "I tried to make myself sound interesting. Did you talk to him?" She congratulated herself out loud for scoring a touchdown.

"Yeah, I said a few things," George told her from across the room. "I basically say the same thing every time I do this show. Or any show. Try to put a positive spin on things. I keep any complaints in house."

"You're not unhappy with our little show, are you George?" asked Dr. Gruber who had entered the green room just as George was making his point.

"Not at all," George said. "I love it. Just had some bumps to smooth out." George leaned closer to Dr. Gruber's ear. "Director's a bit of an ego, gets under my skin a bit, but not the worst I've had, by far."

"He's an acquired taste," Gruber whispered back. "Jake's actually starting to feel better, and I would have asked him to stay on and direct it. But since it was in our building, I figured, their director should stay."

"Probably," George said. "I didn't say anything negative to the reporter don't worry."

"Public relations aren't my first talent," Gruber said with a smile. "But I like to think I've learned in my years on the board how to make things look good. Hell I told that reporter that Strindberg and I had some big publicity campaign, when really all we did was send an announcement to each theater's mailing list."

Gruber winked at him, slapped him on the shoulder and moved on into the green room to talk to a few of the actors.

*

Out on stage, Stu Porter was trying to talk on his cellphone and direct a lighting adjustment at the same time. "It's still too bright Manny," he called up to the light booth. "Take it down about 25% or something." Porter put the phone back to his ear. "Sorry Doug, what was I saying?"

"You were talking about the hallway I think."

"Yes, of course, this dreadful, long storage hallway. Opens up into the house on one side and then into the green room on the other. And those stairs to get up into the light booth. I damn near had a heart attack climbing them. Have you ever been in here?"

"Only as an audience member," Doug said. "I try not to look at how they make the sausage in other theaters. Running one theater is enough for me, thanks."

"Well, I'm glad the rehearsal time for our actors won't go to waste at least...Manny, 43 is still blinking, do something please...I'm glad the rehearsal time didn't go to waste, but I'd almost rather have not directed if it meant someone could do the show back at Prescott."

"You didn't tell that goofy reporter any of that did you, Stu?" Doug's voice sounded weary. "We don't need anymore bad publicity."

"Relax," Porter said. "I told him what he wanted to hear. This isn't my first show, you know."

"I know. I polished it up too, that's part of my job. Hope it isn't too dreadful for you, though."

"George is a bit of a pain in the ass, but all and all the show should be fun. Audience won't know any better, and I can't complain about the performances, by and large. Just don't think I'd volunteer here again."

"Next year, mandatory flu shots for all cast members?"

"Brilliant. Anyway, gotta go get this light thing straightened out. Damn light board is screwy here."

"Talk to you later, then."

"Goodnight, Doug."

Porter pushed the button on his cell phone. "It's still blinking, Manny? Do we need a magic key or something to get it to stop?"

*

The joint production of A Christmas Carol, with the Prescott Players opens Friday the 18th at the Little Dionysus Playhouse at 8:00PM. Tickets can be purchased online or over the phone up until an hour before curtain.
Art, Look, Listen

Alicia had entered the incorrect code twice already. The third time was not the charm and the lock-box beeped its disapproval again. If she'd write these things down...

On the fourth try, she remembered the five digits in the proper order, and the box beeped its sweet acceptance of her code. The red flashing light now shone solid green. She pulled open the tiny drawer and removed the key. She grabbed her bag of supplies, and entered the building. To spare heartache later on, she replaced the key into the lock-box right away.

Once again she made her way past shelves of toy guns, cups, plates, goofy hats, and many other forms of theatrical paraphernalia. The novelty of these items had long since worn off in the month and a half she'd been coming here. On this, probably her last day, she paid it all virtually no mind as she passed into a door leading her into the long, thin hallway that used to give her the creeps.

This hallway led both to the backstage area of this theater and out into what she called the audience section, though she knew theater types called it "the house". From the house she walked up the slight incline of one of the aisles toward the open door of the lobby, her final destination. It would have been easier to be given a key to enter the lobby right from the street, but management told her there were only two copies of that key. So she'd been given the code to the back entrance.

Sunlight from a pretty April morning perfectly illuminated the lobby today. She unfolded the stepping stool that she'd left leaning against the wall on her previous visit, and placed it in front of a large rectangle mounted on the wall and draped in red cloth. She climbed the small stool and grabbed a handful of the cloth. She pulled the cloth aside.

"Good morning, again," she said to an oil painting. "Our last session together. Are you ready?"

The face responded with the same almost-smile that had greeted her every comment, question and observation over the last seven Sundays. Unchanged, and yet somehow still responding in kind to whatever mood she'd been in when she arrived, the oil painting had intrigued her from the start.

"You were a bit of a mess when we met, weren't you?" she asked. "Now look at you. Almost as good as new."

She stepped down and looked at the entire painting from a distance. A well built man in a white robe, with unruly but not messy black hair. Green eyes. He leaned up against a boulder, holding a fancy cup in one hand, and a pair of masks on a string in the other. A mountain in the far background. The Little Dionysus Playhouse, a namesake of the god in this painting, had hired her to touch up this 80 year old artwork.

The theater's board of directors had called her college's art department and asked if any student would be suited for a basic, (and inexpensive) restoration project on an oil painting. Her professor had referred her to the playhouse right away.

"Seven weeks," she said, crossing her arms and addressing the image. "Does it seem that long ago to you?" She thought back over her previous sessions as she mixed the final small amount of paint for the job.

*

She was afraid she'd be late, until her roommate reminded her that she was headed to a theater. They were full of actors and other artists for whom schedules were suggestions and not requirements. Still, Alicia walked in through the lobby doors at exactly her appointment time.

There happened to be an older, well-dressed gentleman in the lobby when she entered. He was standing behind the counter, filling out paperwork.

"Excuse me," she said. The man looked up and nodded with a smile.

"Yes, can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Dr. Gruber. I'm Alicia from the college..."

"Ah yes, of course. You've found Dr. Gruber." The white-haired gentleman made his way around the counter and took her hand. "We spoke on the phone briefly. Nice to meet you. Look no further than behind you for your job. Potential job, I should say."

Alicia turned and saw a near life-sized oil painting of the Greek God Dionysus. It was a decent, though not stunning painting. Competent, with interesting touches here and there, but would look quite out of place anywhere but this lobby.

There were streaks in various places, and a stain or two on the god's robe. The eyes of the figure had tiny cracks and a few other places were flaking.

"Not the best place to store an oil painting, we know," Gruber said. "And if it were conventionally valuable, we'd try to do something else with it. But its value is purely sentimental from what we've been told."

She could see why.

"Has it always hung right here?" she asked.

"This isn't the original lobby," Gruber said. "First one was damaged by fire years ago. Painting wasn't burned, but we think some of the stains are from the smoke."

"I agree."

"So we just need a bit of repair and touch up. Make the cracked parts look better, sharpen some of the lines, or whatever it is artists do that I will never understand." Gruber chuckled. "What do you think?"

They couldn't afford to pay her exactly what the job was worth, she knew that. The only question in her mind now was whether her skills would show the painting the respect it deserved. If so, she'd have some more experience and hopefully a recommendation for the future.

"I'm guessing 10 to 15 or so hours total," she said. "Whose schedule do I need to coordinate with?"

Gruber shook his head. "Just your own. We'll give you a code to the back door, and you can come in when it works for you."

"Is that a good idea, Doctor? I mean, you hardly know me."

"I imagine I'll get to know you. Besides you don't seem dangerous."

He winked at her in a way she actually didn't find disturbing.

"I can start this coming Sunday morning then, if you like."

"Sundays are good. Except for two of them, you'll have the place to yourself."

"Excellent."

*

It was all in the timing, she figured on Sunday morning. Even if she had the code to the lock-box correct, if it wasn't entered within a certain time, the tiny, mindless computer inside of the thing wouldn't read it. Her third attempt did the trick and as a gentle morning mist rolled in from across the quiet street that Sunday, she stepped into the chilly waiting room.

She called it the waiting room, but it was the green room, officially. In her head she knew that, but it was where actors waited, so she kept calling it a waiting room.

She'd been to plays before, and came to see friends in plays. She'd never been in one herself, though. Too scared. But she knew enough about a theater to sense how odd one seemed when empty and silent as this one was now.

After locking the door behind her, Alicia looked around at the various shelves in this room overstuffed with props for plays. She stopped and tried on several hats, modeling them in the nearby wall mirror. Then she sampled the many eyeglasses available in a box marked "eyeglasses assorted". Then combinations of hats and glasses. A laugh, and a realization she had work to do. So she put the playthings away and continued on.

The odd little hallway she would need to pass through was quite dark. She felt around for a light switch, but didn't find one. Dismissing the silly notion that someone was lying in wait for her in there, she nonetheless pulled out her cell phone and lit her way as she jogged through the corridor and out into the house.

Here, it smelled of fresh wood. She could just make out piles of lumber lying on the stage. The early phases of set building for the next show, she figured. A single floor lamp in the middle of the stage lit the area just enough for her to see her way up the aisle and into the lobby.

Out in the lobby, "Dionysus" greeted her. A small curtain lie open around the painting, which she had not expected. It looked like she could close it after each session of work. She thought that was a classy touch. Probably Dr. Gruber's.

The morning sun, despite the mist made electric light unnecessary today. It would almost be like en plein air painting for her.

"Good morning," she said, setting her supplies down on the floor. She approached the painting.

"Just want to give you one more look over before I get started."

She made mental note of the damage on the painting, the equipment she had available and other artistic considerations. Then she spent a few minutes assembling her small worktable and mixing her paints and cleaners.

"I don't talk to all of my work, you know," she said as she began to apply a thin layer of paint to a distressed bootstrap on the figure. "Not that you are my work, of course. But I only talk to works that contain a face of some kind. Usually human, but I talked to an oil painting I did of a cat once." She tapped her brush into a thinning substance. "We still see each other. That one's in my mom's office now."

Alicia worked in silence for nearly 20 minutes. At one point she turned around, half-hoping there was a coffee machine in the lobby. There was none of course, and she made a note to bring some with her next week.

"Hopefully I'll be talking to many more paintings soon," she said. Her brush was a fraction of an inch from the canvass when she halted her progress, reconsidered her mixing success, and withdrew the brush. "There's this job. Paid internship really, with a photography company in another state. I'd help paint photos into oil paintings. Mostly of people."

She placed the slightest blob of green into the brown mass on her pallet, and stirred. She slathered some onto a small test canvass. Satisfied with this hue, she dipped her brush into it and returned to the damaged boot of the Greek God before her.

"I'd love a chance to intern there," she said. "Jack's not crazy about it, but I think I can convince him." She drew a long, narrow streak of the recently mixed paint across the boot. "Jack's my boyfriend, by the way. I don't imagine you date much?"

She smiled and continued her repairs over the next hour, making occasional comments as she did so, more so than usual, even for her. This painting just invited conversation.

At the end of her session, Alicia packed away her equipment, and washed her hands in the nearby ladies room. When she came out, she looked at the painting again.

"Your boots are looking better than they did," she said. "I'm not happy with my work on the left one so much, though. Gonna have to do something about it next time."

Once she closed the curtain over the painting she grabbed her kit. There wasn't a thing in the world to keep people from opening the curtain whenever they wanted to, but she appreciated the gesture anyway.

"Wish me luck on the internship," she said, gathering her stuff. "Interview in three days."

She walked through the doors to the house on her way out of the back of the building.

*

"I got the internship," she declared to the painting a week later as she parted the curtains that covered it. "Came down between me and two other people. I didn't ask why I was selected. Seems like bad luck to do that, you know?"

Today she worked on a few spots on the boulder against which Dionysus leaned.

"Not the most exciting section of the panting," she said later, tapping the brush gently over a few peeling spots within the gray-blackness of the paint, "but we have to take pride in the mundane details too, I think. Don't you?"

The partial grin seemed to agree with her as she looked up into the face of the painting. She made mental notes as to how to go about tackling the eyes in a future session. "Those are going to be a headache," she said, looking into the eyes more intently. "But I've got time to think on that later."

Returning her full attention to restoring the boulder, Alicia didn't speak again for half an hour. The blending of colors into the otherwise mundane section of the painting proved trickier than she thought it would. There were some difficult shadows down near the bottom of the painting. After several failed attempts she perfected the color, and began applying it in short, even strokes.

"I haven't told Jack yet," she said at last. "About getting the internship. Like I said, he didn't like me applying for it in the first place. Doesn't believe in long-distance relationships." She leaned in and squinted at an unsightly glob of paint. Upon closer examination she spotted a tiny hair, (probably her own) caught in the fresh paint.

She grabbed tweezers from her worktable and held her breath. Feeling like a surgeon she guided the tweezers right up to the edge of the canvass, clamped down on the wayward follicle and extracted it from the paint. She breathed again and placed the tweezers back on the table.

"Jack's touchy sometimes," she went on. "Not angry, but touchy. He gets in these moods and you have to handle him just right. Otherwise it's like wearing a wet towel on your shoulders all day." She began to repair the blob of paint on the canvass. "That's why I didn't tell him about the internship yet. It's wrong I know, but I wanted a few days to just enjoy it, you know?"

She looked up at the face again. It expressed agreement.

"I'll tell him tonight. Or tomorrow."

That was the last she said to the painting that morning, other than to bid it goodbye for the day before shutting the curtain at the end of her session. She grabbed her equipment and walked back into the house. It still smelled of lumber, and as far as she could tell, no progress had been made with the set since her session the previous week.

She made a note to herself to come see whatever this show was when it opened. With one last glance at the stage she descended the aisle, clicked on her cell phone, and went through the creepy dark hallway to the waiting room on her way out.

*

Alicia sniffed as she paused for a moment in front of the empty stage this time. A wall and a rudimentary staircase of some kind accompanied the now smaller pile of lumber. All of the wood appeared to glow as it reflected the dim illumination of the single floor light on stage. (This, she had been told was called a "ghost light".)

Thunder dragged across the sky outside as she sloshed in boots up the aisle of the house. She had her equipment in one hand and a wad of tissues in the other. She sniffed again and pushed the lobby door open. The sizzle of rain filled the lobby as the precipitation pounded the windows. The curtains covering the painting, along with the rest of the lobby seemed to reflect her melancholy state in the dusk-like light of the stormy early morning. Whereas the green room, the creepy hallway and the stage had merely been indifferent to her presence, the lobby felt like a passenger on a long bus trip that just won't stop staring at you.

She set down her equipment in front of the painting, and blew her nose again. She walked behind the ticket counter, switching on the lights of the lobby for the first time during her visits. (The sun was of no use today.) Once back there she discovered an unopened box of tissues. Glancing at her own well-worn wad, she took the pristine box, dropped a few dollar bills carelessly on the ticket counter, and moved around to begin her work.

Alicia parted the curtains over the painting by a few inches, and stopped. Instead of flinging them open in her usual exuberance, she eased them open as though waiting for a wild creature of some kind to come flying out from behind them.

None did.

She set up her paint table. Then she went to the ladies room and moistened her brushes. Afterward she blew her nose several times and looked at the painting without seeing it. With a sigh she began to mix a few colors together to match the blue sky in the upper left-hand corner of the piece. All this she did in silence.

And in silence she remained for ten minutes. Fifteen. The splotch of repaired sky in the painting mocked her, burning a hole into her eyes as the off-mixture and inexact brush strokes testified to her distracted state. She put down her brush and backed away from the painting. After a moment she sat upon the floor and leaned her back against the ticket counter. The Dionysus image, near-grinning as always nonetheless looked sympathetic today.

The protracted hiss of car tires outside crawling down the rain-drenched road, and vanishing around the next corner. Rain pelting. Sporadic thunder. Her own sniffling.

"Not my week," she said in a voice that would have been too soft for another person to hear over the white noise of the falling rain.

"I told Jack about the internship," she continued. "He was upset I didn't get his approval before accepting it. Like he's some custodian of my time?" She blew her nose again. "I told him he wasn't. He said something about it being time to start sacrificing art for the sake of who I dated."

She let the thunderstorm do the talking for a few minutes as she crawled over to her worktable to retrieve the box of tissues. She then returned to her position in front of the ticket counter.

"And now this cold," she said, waving the tissue box at the painting. "That's why I'm sniffling, by the way. Not because of Jack. Not today, anyway. I let him go, you see."

Dionysus seemed to express approval of this choice.

"Oh, I know he was right there on the edge of doing it himself," she said. "I get it. But he hadn't jumped yet. I guess I pushed him over it in a way, instead." She laughed a bitter, phlegm-producing laugh that became a small cough. "I wanted to make the decision this time. He looked more surprised than hurt when I told him I was going to choose art instead of him. He always kept his toiletries in this little leather bag in my bathroom? He walked past me, grabbed it, and walked out the door. Didn't even slam it."

Through the glass lobby doors she could see one of those people who seemed to take pride in lollygagging through a downpour make his way down the sidewalk in front of the building. Hands in his pockets, shoulders stooped, head watching his feet, he vanished around a corner after a minute.

"It hurts a bit," she said. "Eight months. I guess it hurts him a bit too. I know it does, actually. But it's like an old sweater."

She looked at Dionysus and laughed at the silliness of her statement. His never changing grin laughed with her.

"Hear me out. Sometimes you have an old sweater and feel so comfortable in it. You wear it all the time in casual places. Even once a few holes appear, you keep wearing it because it still works; it's like an extension of you."

She blew her nose and tossed the used tissue on the floor near her. "Then one day you put it on, and it's still great, but your eye catches one of the holes and you see that it's bigger than you thought. You keep wearing the sweater though. You go about your day, but you realize that when you take it off that night, you'll probably never put it back on again. You might even it wear it a bit longer than you normally would once you get home that day, because you know what's coming."

She wiped her eyes. Not because of her cold this time.

"So you take it off and toss it on the floor and it sits where you dropped it for a while. You get used to it just being there. Like there's always this potential of putting it back on. Before you know it...it's warm out and nobody's wearing sweaters. Then, one day when your cleaning your house..." She didn't finish the thought, but added, "And you realize you're kind of okay with it. Even though some days, you still go to your closet to grab that sweater in a mad rush out the door on an autumn day."

Rain continued to pour, and thunder came more often. Alicia stood up, went to the light switch behind the counter, and shut off the lights. She returned to her spot once again, and watched the rain. She neither said, nor painted anymore that morning. Still, the painting grinned at her. She found comfort in that.

*

A small flock of children tore through the already open door to the green room as she approached the building a week later. They almost, but didn't quite run into her. The pony-tailed girl at the lead of the small platoon shouted "Excuse us", and Alicia had to laugh.

A middle aged woman in jeans and an old paint-splattered sweatshirt appeared in the green room doorway.

"Don't just tear off into a parking lot like that," this woman hollered. "Are you crazy? You always check."

"Sorry," Ponytail called over her shoulder as she and the others disappeared into a small convenience store on the other side of the parking lot.

Alicia stepped toward the door.

"Don't worry, I think it's safe now," said the woman. "I'm Emma. Are you the one fixing the painting in the lobby?"

"Yes. Alicia." She extended her hand. Emma took it. "Trying to at least."

The two stepped into the green room, Emma shutting the door behind them.

It was a stark contrast to what Alicia was accustomed to in the green room. What had been a quiet entryway to her project now teemed with life. About a dozen children, mostly girls about ten years old or younger she guessed, meandered around the room with papers, crayons, and other instruments of creativity. It was boisterous but not chaotic.

"We're on a bit of a break here," Emma told her as they made their way into the green room. "Children's production workshop. Today we're working on some of our homemade set pieces before rehearsal. Kids, say hi to Alicia, please."

A symphony of "Hi Alicias" filled the room, though almost nobody stopped what they were doing. One child, however, a girl with green glasses and unbound dirty blonde hair that reached past her backside walked right up to her.

"I'm Sarah, are you going to help us paint our set?"

Alicia stooped down to Sarah's level, setting her equipment on the floor next to her.

"Actually, I'm here to work on one of those big paintings out in the lobby," Alicia told her. "Make it a little prettier."

"The one behind the curtains, right?" Sarah asked.

"That's the one," Alicia told her. "It's pretty old. I'm trying to make it look clean again."

"I like that one," the girl said. "I don't like the other painting. He's boring. I paint sometimes too."

"Really? Well maybe someday I can see some of what you do."

"Come see our show, and you can," Sarah said. "I'm painting the mountains in the background, but they're not done yet."

"I'll do that. And when I'm done, maybe you can tell me what you think of what I did. But I think your job is harder."

"I practice," said the girl, as much with her huge green eyes as with her mouth.

"That's great, Sarah," Emma said. "Why don't we let Alicia work, and we can talk to her later, okay?"

"Okay," the girl said. "See you soon, Alicia." Sarah waved and walked away.

"Bye Sarah," Alicia said as she stood back up, equipment in hand.

"She's a great kid," Emma said. "They all are, really. I love to work with them."

"So is all of that lumber out on the stage for your show?" Alicia asked.

"Heavens no," Emma said. "That's for the main stage show. We'll be doing our show in front of their set. That's what Sarah's working on, a backdrop that will cover the other set."

"What's the show? When is it?"

"Heidi. And it goes on in about three weeks. God willing."

"I'll come. I'd love to see it," Alicia told her, excited about seeing a kids-only show.

"They'd appreciate that, I'm sure," Emma said. "I'll get you some details later, but I know you've got work to do now, so..."

The outside door flung open with a bang, and the whirlwind that had nearly knocked Alicia over in the parking lot stormed back into the room.

"Walk inside please," Emma called to them. "And please close the door."

Alicia smiled. "It looks like you've got work to do as well."

"It never ends," Emma said laughing. "I'll get that info to you before you leave."

"Thanks, good luck."

Alicia passed through the skinny hallway. It was less scary today with all the people in the building and the lights on. She made a note of where the light switch was this time. She bet Sarah wouldn't be nervous walking through there in the dark, though.

"Yes, I'm feeling better this week," she told Dionysus, who seemed to ask the question as she opened the curtain. "Truth be told, it would be hard not to feel better being around kids like that, having fun. Creating. I was one of those, you know." She began to mix her paints. She said little that morning, as the faint sounds of squeals and laughter from theater kids on the stage provided the only soundtrack she needed for this session. Both she and the Greek God spent most of the morning smiling.

*

The children were quieter the following week. So quiet in fact she tiptoed into the green room this time, and closed the door slowly behind her.

Most of them looked up as she entered and greeted her. She returned the greeting with a wave and whispered "hi". Another adult, who she assumed was the kid wrangler for the show, nodded over her magazine and kept reading.

Two of the kids were on the couch looking over the script. One had earbuds in. Two more were playing some kind of game. They were laughing, but subdued. She didn't see Sarah, the only girl whose name she actually knew. Voices came in through a speaker that she hadn't noticed before. It hung just over the door to the once creepy hallway. They were the voices of the kids in the show, from the stage.

Alicia passed through the hallway. For a moment she could hear the voices both through the speaker in the green room and live on the stage. She glanced backstage for a moment as she passed through the hallway. Another child stood against the wall of the hallway with his eyes closed. She tried not to disturb him.

She was even more careful when she opened the door at the opposite end of the hallway, leading to the house. Had she been thinking, she would have suggested somebody be in the lobby to let her in the front way so she wouldn't disturb the show, but it was too late now. She marched as quickly but as quietly as she could up the aisle, and once more passed through the lobby doors. She'd avoided looking at the stage, so she could be surprised by the set later on.

She couldn't help but hear the young, at times squeaky and usually too loud voices of the child actors as they plowed their way through a scene with enthusiastic abandon.

In a moment she was up on the small stool, looking the painting in the face; she had finally reached that portion of the restoration.

"I read up on you," she whispered to the painting. The cracked eyes and half-grin felt both more comforting and more off putting when viewed from this close. "You're a god of wine as well. You're known as the Wanderer, among many other names."

She carefully extracted a damaged piece of original paint from the canvass with a pair of tweezers.

"I noticed a lot of the things you're connected to involve escaping in some way. Wine, wandering, theater." She combined several colors to match the face color. It was the trickiest shade to duplicate so far. "What are you running from, anyway? Or are you just running? Or do you just want us mortals to run somewhere?"

No matter how soft her whispering, she felt like the actors on the stage could hear her.

"We'll come back to that," she said, smiling at the painting.

She didn't want to add any more paint than necessary to the face area. The ground and the boulder, even the boots allowed more freedom to paint on her own. But the face must be left as much intact as possible, which is why she'd use special astringents and cleaners that she'd borrowed from one of her professors. They were expensive. Her compensation for the entire job would have just covered one container of the stuff had she bought her own.

She worked on the face, all except the eyes, with lines from Heidi as her background noise. A few times she heard Emma directing the kids.

After about an hour, when she'd noticed the lines had stopped and laughing had started, she turned to the house. She saw Emma backing into the room.

"Remember if you need a snack to keep it in the green room or outside please," Emma called into the house. She turned and greeted Alicia.

"Hope I'm not disturbing your work," Emma said.

"Not at all," Alicia replied. I was afraid I might be disturbing yours."

"We can't hear a thing in there. Especially if all you're doing is painting or cleaning."

Alicia wondered what Emma would think if she knew she tended to talk to her paintings. She wasn't going to tell her, though.

"It's going well, then?" Alicia asked her, setting down her brush and pallet.

"It's going," Emma said with a sigh, but a laugh followed. "They're good kids. It'll get tighter as it goes on. Which reminds me..." Emma reached into her back pocket and handed Alicia a ticket. "That's for opening night. It's already paid for."

Alicia began to protest, "Oh, but I couldn't..."

"It's my complimentary ticket," Emma said. "Everyone in the show gets one. So my husband has to pay for a ticket for a change. Won't kill him."

Emma laughed again. Alicia placed the ticket in her own back pocket, with some reluctance.

"Thank you," she said.

"And something for the other pocket," Emma said, reaching behind her. She pulled out a crinkled, folded piece of paper. "A gift from someone you know."

Intrigued, Alicia opened it. She smiled upon seeing a simplistic but well-drawn version of the Dionysus painting. Colored pencil. 'Sarah' was scrawled in large print at the bottom.

"She's good," Alicia said. "Can't wait to see her set painting."

"You can step inside and check it out now if you want to," Emma offered.

"No, I want to be surprised for opening night, but thank you."

"Okay," Emma said. "She'll like that. They all will."

"Who does Sarah play in the show?"

"Oh she's an assistant stage manager," Emma told her. "Behind the scenes. She likes telling people what to do."

"I only met her once, but I think I can see that."

"She's good at managing too. Helping people," Emma said. "Her parents said she barely spoke before she came here last summer."

"Really? That's sad."

"Quite. Something happened," Emma said, looking passed Alicia out of the lobby windows. "Something we haven't been told about, but not good. I shutter to think about it so I try not to. But the good news is being here has helped her heal from whatever it was."

The thought of Sarah in any kind of trauma closed Alicia's throat. She put on her best pensive face, and nodded, hoping to look contemplative and professional, rather than upset.

"But this place will do that to you," Emma said, turning back to the house. "Something about this place. Something about theater. All of them, but this one in particular for me."

"I believe it," Alicia managed to say as her throat relented.

"We won't have anymore Sunday rehearsals," Emma said. "So I guess we'll be seeing you when we open?"

Alicia patted the ticket in her back pocket. "Wouldn't miss it."

"Great. Good luck with your work. I look forward to see your opening night too."

Emma smiled, threw her hand up, and stepped back into the house. Alicia watched the doors swing shut behind Emma. They clunked to a halt a moment later.

She looked down at the picture Sarah had given her. She refused to think about what may have happened to her young friend before she found theater. She did, however, allow herself to think about Emma's words:

"Something about this place. Something about theater."

Digging in her bag Alicia found some tape and attached Sarah's picture to the outside of her equipment trunk.

"Escapes," Alicia told the painting. "I get it now."

*

The eyes. She stared at them for close to ten minutes. There was no more avoiding this part of the project.

No kids this week. No laughter and hollering. No Heidi. She was all on her own again, facing the most delicate part of her project.

"One is in better shape than the other, my friend," she told the painting as she leaned up against the ticket counter. "I've been close enough to them over the last few weeks to know that. I probably should have worked on them first but," she walked toward the painting, "I'm nervous, okay?"

She climbed up onto her stool again and put her own eyes close to the cracked ones of the oil painting. No matter how closely she examined them, she couldn't reduce them to mere paint blotches; it felt as though they looked at her. Perhaps the best part of the entire painting, she thought.

"I could make any of half a dozen mistakes on most of you, and only certain people would ever notice. But your eyes...if I don't get it right, everyone will know forever, won't they?"

The right eye had a longer crack than the left. Both were faded, probably from a time when a display light shone too close to them from above, she figured.

"I don't want you to worry though," she said. She pulled a small magnifying glass from her pocket and examined the eyes more carefully. "Being nervous means I care, right?"

She descended the steps and unpacked her things. This time she had a small pouch with tiny brushes and other tools she had yet to use.

"You're in good hands," she said. "Hopefully you don't doubt that by now."

The ever present quasi-grin suggested he didn't doubt it one bit.

She began extracting the proper tools and chemicals from the pouch to begin the delicate work.

"It's weird in here without the kids, isn't it?" she asked about fifteen minutes into her precision operation on the right eye. "I don't know much about kids. I knew they'd be here a few times when I took this job, though. I wondered if they'd distract me too much. But they were fine."

She blinked away some of the fatigue from her own eyes and leaned back in to continue.

"They're kind of inspirational though. Like Sarah. Been through some kind of hard time. Then coming here, and getting better. Little by little. I think that's wonderful."

She held her breath a moment during a delicate pass. When it was finished, she spoke again.

"I couldn't do theater, I don't think. Though maybe the set painting stuff, like Sarah. That sounds fun. But there's something about it that opens people up. Is that what you're doing? Hmm? Get people to relax, and be open? Is that what theater does? Or is it just about having fun?"

She stepped down from the stool and took a few paces back to see her work from a distance, moving around the room to view it from different angles.

"Maybe having fun is the key to being open? I think that's another problem I had with Jack. I still think about him. He'd only have fun when it was scripted. When he knew when it was going to happen. And he'd never have fun, or never let himself have fun when things were stressful or serious. That's the most important time to try to laugh, isn't it?"

The eyes looked back at her as they always had, the barely-there grin somehow providing another answer to one of her questions.

"You're right," she said. "Different things for different people. Fair enough. Just like painting. Art in general. I guess we tend to see what we want to see. Or need to see?"

The wisdom of the grin again was not lost on her.

"Well," she said, climbing the stool again, "what I need to see is getting back to work here. I'm getting edgy. But, so far so good. Shall we continue?"

She talked of Sarah. Of Jack. Of her professor that got her the job. Her plans for the internship. Her fears about same. It was her most talkative session with the painting, possibly because she was the most nervous this time.

The hours got ahead of her.

"My lord, is it almost lunch time already?" she asked a bit after noon. She hopped down from the stool and began to clean up in haste. "I'm supposed to meet with my professor to talk about my capstone project."

She looked up and sighed. She'd only ever gotten to the one eye, though it was the worse of the two.

"I'll come back, though. I wouldn't leave you cross eyed," she said, with a hurried laugh. After cleaning up she took one last look at the eye from a distance. "If I'm allowed to say so on my own behalf, I think I nailed it."

She closed the curtain and turned towards the house. "An extra week, just for one eye," she called over her shoulder. "I wouldn't do it for just anybody you know."

*

"Seven weeks," she said, crossing her arms and addressing the image on her final day. "Does it seem that long ago to you?" She thought back over each of her previous sessions as she mixed the final small amount of paint for the job. "Truth be told I didn't get much done that rainy morning. But we won't tell anyone about that will we?"

The second eye proved far less challenging than the first, but it too was delicate work. She took her time with it, savoring her final day on the project.

"I got some of my internship papers in the mail yesterday," she said, dabbing a tiny brush in astringent. "Lots to take care of, not a lot of time. All happening so fast, you know what I mean?"

She stepped off of her stool to get the long view again.

"Though what do I know? Time may move quite slow for you. Or you know, would if you were actually here and able to hear me."

She ascended the stool again.

"Guess you could be real. I don't know what's real and what's not. Maybe I should. I should pick a church and stick with it. Force faith. Do what they tell me. That just doesn't feel like me though, you know? And not because I'm an artist. It's just because I think sometimes I can see something Divine in everything. Well, most things. Not a table usually, or things like that. But definitely art. Good art that speaks to me."

She pulled out her magnifying glass and examined the eye with a passing glance at the one she had already finished.

"Now are you the best painting, artistically speaking? No offense, but no. Your creator was competent, had some flare for the dramatic, but as a painting you're fairly run of the mill. Except these eyes. And that damn grin." She shook her head. "They got something right about that." She looked at the grin momentarily, and than back up to the eye. "There's life in you. I suppose that makes you a success as a painting."

The grin neither agreed nor disagreed with her as she glanced at it once more.

Even at her more casual speed she finished the eye in less than half an hour. She stepped back, assessing the whole painting. She deemed her work satisfactory, though each time she stepped back for what she knew would be the final viewing in her final session, she'd squinted and rushed to her kit to correct one more minor flaw, even in the sections she had long ago declared complete.

After the eighth or ninth such correction, she came to terms with what she was doing, and swallowed her perfectionism. And her stalling. She began packing up her things, and washing her brushes at last. (Nodding at the finished painting a few times during the process.)

Less than 90 minutes after she'd arrived for this final session, she stood in the warm sunlight that shone through the windows, her box with Sarah's picture still attached sitting by her feet.

"I guess that's that," she said. "You're all done. Well, as done as I can allow you to be. I could sit here another 50 years and find something else to fix. My professor says a good artist knows when to conclude working, since a piece is rarely finished. Time to conclude, wouldn't you say?"

The perpetual grin, topped with freshened eyes and a face recently made blemish free looked back at her yet again. She felt in her heart this time that the look was one of approval for her work.

"I'll miss this," she said, looking around the lobby. "I won't cry or anything, don't worry. I'm not quite that much of a flake. But it's been an interesting two months. Not all paintings bring out that much conversation you know, so feel proud."

The painting grinned.

"And I'll be back in two weeks to see Heidi. That's when they're having the unveiling. I didn't want to make the unveiling a big thing, but Dr. Gruber seemed so excited about it, so I agreed."

She walked up to the painting, and took each curtain between her fingers. One last check over everything. It would be the last moment, she new, when this painting was her restoration project. Once she closed the curtain, it was the LDP's painting once again. Hopefully a better painting than she'd found when she started.

"Nice working with you," she said, as she slid the curtain shut. The last thing she noticed as she did so were the eyes.

She smiled and walked back into the house toward the little hallway She'd recently noticed the words "The Funnel" had been painted on one of its walls at some point. She'd asked Emma what it meant.

"Nobody knows," Emma had told her. "Been there for years and years."

Alicia decided she could live with the mystery. What was life, after all, without a little mystery?

*

She survived the mention of her and her work in the announcements to the audience before the start of Heidi on opening night. She survived the small presentation during intermission when she was asked to pull the curtain open on the restored painting. And she survived the round of applause, the various comments, the questions and the congratulations from the patrons as they made their way back for the second half of the show. Everything calmed down once Dr. Gruber handed her the check for her work, (which amounted to 100 dollars more than they had agreed to). She put the check in her pocket and joined the rest of the audience for act two of Heidi.

She thought the kids were terrific, if a bit too fast and clumsy at times. She clapped warmly at the end when they all took their company bow. After the show, as the audience meandered into the lobby again, she approached Emma.

"Congratulations," she told the director. "That was so much fun."

"Thank you, and to you too," Emma said, gesturing toward the painting. "I didn't get to see it at intermission. You're quite gifted."

Alicia had survived the many compliments at intermission. She would survive this one as well.

"Speaking of art, what a great mountain Sarah painted," Alicia said. "So colorful. I could almost smell the mountain air."

Emma laughed. "You know she'd love to see you, she's getting dressed in the back, can you wait a few minutes? I'll send her out."

"Sure, I'll be right here."

A few more patrons expressed their appreciation for her work as they made their way out of the building. She thanked each of them, only casting casual glances at the painting. In fact she'd hardly looked at it all night. Somehow it seemed out of place to do so. Like going back to your high school prom the year after you graduated.

"Hi," Sarah's little voice chimed in through the thinning crowd. Alicia turned around to greet her.

"Hi there, I really liked your set. Such beautiful mountains."

"Thank you," Sarah said, walking towards the Dionysus painting. "I worked hard. Tell me about fixing him."

Alicia stood next to Sarah, answering her questions, pointing out the things she'd done, what sort of equipment she used to do it. She did not point out the small imperfections that still bothered her.

"Did you sing to him?" Sarah asked.

Alicia blinked. "Did I sing?"

"To him," Sarah pointed at the painting. "I like to sing to my pictures. Grandma sings to her plants to make them bloom. I sing to my pictures to make them bloom."

"That's a lovely thing to do," said Alicia. "But you know, I never tried that. But I'll tell you a secret."

Sarah cupped her hand over her ear. Trying not to smile, because this was serious business, Alicia knelt down to Sarah's height and whispered in her ear, "I may not sing, but sometimes I talk to my paintings. I talked to him a few times."

"About what?" Sarah whispered back.

"Oh, about all kinds of things. Do you ever talk to yours, or just sing?"

"I talk sometimes," Sarah said. "Sometimes they talk back."

"Do they really?"

"Sometimes. But you have to listen really carefully. And they don't always use words. If you don't have to have words, sometimes they talk back."

Alicia didn't hide her smile this time. She looked over her shoulder toward the painting. A couple was standing in front of it. When they departed, two gleaming eyes and an unflappable grin revealed themselves to her.

"They sure do, Sarah. They sure do."

###
About the Author

Ty Unglebower is a freelance writer and sometime stage actor living in Brunswick, Maryland. Having been introduced to the theater in college, (making it his minor) Ty has appeared in nearly 30 stage productions since. That passion informs his fiction writing, regardless of the subject and setting.

His theater adventures, thoughts and plans can be found on his long running theater blog, Always Off Book. His thoughts on other things, including writing, being introverted and miscellany can be found on his main blog at TyUnglebower.com. You can also read his occasionally witty, usually random and at times baffling tweets by following him on Twitter @TyUnglebower. You'll find his Smashwords page here.

If you enjoyed this story collection, consider purchasing Ty's debut novel, Flowers of Dionysus, also set in the Little Dionysus Playhouse, available in Spring, 2015.
