Amber made her entrance timidly. She held the turtleneck in one hand and the hood in the other, perplexed. The leotard was a bit too small for her, producing a décolletage of magnificent proportions.
“You’ll have to cover those up, kid,” Meredith said. “They’ll glow in the dark.”
Amber, to her credit, just smiled. “I can’t figure out how this stuff goes,” she said and handed Meredith the hood and shirt. Faced with such direct acceptance of what was plainly her need to be top dog, the older actress became motherly. She helped Amber get togged up, snapping the hood fasteners down and then getting into her own hood. They trooped out into the rehearsal space, Meredith leading, like a broody hen with her chicks.
“You can’t see much, eh?” Shane said. There they were, four black-clad figures, ranged in a row, gazing at themselves in the studio mirrors that lined the walls. Now that they were all dressed the same, you could hardly tell them apart.
“We won’t rehearse in costume till later,” I said, “but you should know what you’re up against. We’ll put you in the box and kill the lights so you have some idea.”
“I have done this before, Polly,” Meredith said. “I’ll sit this one out.”
“Solidarity, Meredith. I know it’s torture. You might as well get back into the habit, so to speak, and you can help the others get their bearings,” I said. “We’ve only got a week, remember.”
The cast made their way backstage, into the black box puppet theatre which was their performance space. The box was about sixteen feet wide, nine feet high and five feet deep. The frame was made out of steel pipes, held together with key clamps (the kind of fittings that require an Allen key to tighten and loosen them), over which were draped several acres of black velour curtains, or masking. At the front of the playing area was a shelf about three feet high and two feet deep, which was essentially the “stage” where the puppets would strut their stuff. Extending out from the sides of the box were two curtains, which served to mask the backstage area from the audience.
Suspended on a pipe above the playing shelf were the “magic” lights, six full-strength ultraviolet tubes that cast what appeared to be no light at all, until one of the fluorescent puppets or props came into view.
The whole contraption was designed to break down into dozens of portable bundles, for ease of loading and unloading them from the van, and for carrying them up and down school staircases. Once the cast got good at it, the stage could be ready to go in about forty minutes. I explained this to the cast, who, with the exception of Meredith, refused to believe me.
The props and puppets themselves were stored under the shelf, behind the masking curtains and littering the backstage area. Every single item had a specific place to be, part of the “pre-set,” which was crucial to the smooth running of the show. If you’ve got to make a flower appear at a precise musical moment, two minutes into the show, the flower had better be where you expect it to be, because the backstage area is very dark and you’re squinting through black netting. All this stuff would become obvious to the cast as we rehearsed, but I could hear Meredith telling them anyway, issuing dire warnings, as if they were all entering enemy territory.
Once they were standing in the playing area, Ruth turned out the rehearsal room overheads, and I flipped the switch on the UV lights. Immediately, the cast disappeared. If you were standing close, you could see the faint blue outline of each figure, but from five feet back, the playing area was empty.
“Meredith, can you bring up the flute, so we can see how this works?” I said. Meredith reached under the shelf and brought out the glass flute, a larger-than-life prop made of clear plastic, painted with a wash of fluorescent pink to make it glow. All the props were equipped with black handles or dowel sticks, so that they appeared to be floating in mid air. Meredith made the flute float around and everybody went “oooh, aaaah.” It really is a cool effect, even if you’re a grown-up.
“To make it disappear,” Meredith said, obviously getting into her Vanna White role, “you take one of these black flags, and just move it in front, like this.” A square of black velour mounted on a dowel, the flag was one of the “tricks” that made audiences gasp. She shooed the rest of the cast out of the box to watch the effect from an audience perspective.
“I wondered how that was done when we were watching the video,” Shane said.
“This is going to be fun,” Amber said.
“Can we take these off now?” Shane said. “I’m cooking.”
“Just wait till you’re halfway through the second show and you can hardly breathe,” Meredith said primly from the box. “Don’t think you can stop just because you’re hot.”
“Meredith, we knew what we were getting into when we signed our contracts,” Shane said, losing his cool with alarming speed. “You don’t get any extra medals just because you did it before, so stop acting like such an asshole.” To be honest, I agreed with him. Meredith’s know-it-all attitude was bugging me, too.
Meredith tore off her hood, and her face appeared out of the darkness, disembodied and distorted with anger. Her teeth were bared and gleamed blue under the UV light.
“Listen, you little shit,” she hissed, “I’m trying to give you the benefit of my experience, and if you don’t like it, then why don’t you go back to turning tricks on Church Street?” There was a little gasp from Amber, Shane drew in his breath, and suddenly Meredith’s face disappeared.
“Is this part of the play?” said Becker, from the door.
Ten
SERPENT: What you believe ith true ith an imaginary notion / The thingth you thee and touch are real, the retht ith jutht emotion.
-The Glass Flute, Scene vii
When the overhead lights came on, Meredith could be seen in the box, struggling to remove the black flag that was draped over her head. A tubby figure stood next to her, with its arms crossed. Since Shane and Amber were out front, Meredith’s flag-man had to be Brad. He was still wearing his hood, but I swear I could feel him grinning.
Meredith was in full hissy-fit mode. “You think that’s funny, Brad? Dicking around with the props? These aren’t toys, dammit. I thought you were a professional.”
“Merry, dear, you are taking yourself way too seriously. This is the first day of rehearsal. If you keep this up, you’ll blow an artery before we open,” Brad said.
“Uh, folks,” I said, “police’re here.” Nobody but me seemed to have heard Becker’s remark. He stood in the doorway, wearing that baffled expression you see sometimes on non-theatre people who interrupt a rehearsal and can’t figure out what’s real and what’s not. Meredith’s remark about Shane would definitely bear checking out later, but it struck me that an in-house investigation might be more diplomatic. Becker, I figured, could be kept in the dark for now. Theatre people do sometimes over-dramatize things—I admit to that tendency myself—and if you take everything they say at face-value, you could wind up reaching the wrong conclusions.
“I have a few questions I’d like to ask,” Becker said. “Can you take a break for a few minutes?”
I suggested that the cast go and change back into their street clothes first. “We’ll work in full blacks later in the week,” I said. There was no point in making the actors endure an interview with an OPP officer while they were dressed like dorks.
While they were changing, Becker sat down at the SM’s table and took out his notebook.
“Did you check out the scene downstairs?” I asked, trying to make light conversation.
“No, Polly, I thought I’d just come up here and ask questions without knowing what the hell was going on. Of course we’ve checked downstairs.” Boy, Becker was touchy.
“I