Idea in Stone (21 page)

“No, I
like him
like him.”

“Oh.”

“Do you think—?”

“God knows,” said Stefan. “Good idea: perhaps you can ask Him,” he said, laughing. “I have to go sort out this Serena thing.”

“Oh screw her,” said Maria. She covered her mouth and giggled. “Sorry. But it’s true. Stop giving her what she wants all the time. It’s your show.”

Stefan smiled. He liked the advice, if for no reason than that is saved him having to receive another tongue-lashing from his employee. “Come out with us tonight,” said Stefan.

“I just might do that,” said Maria.

~

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully, as the cast did a “cue-to-cue” walkthrough, in which the technician working with Charlene ran through the lighting and sound cues. Norman used his script, which did nothing to alleviate Stefan’s nerves, but prevented any new conflicts.

Stefan sat down beside Charlene in the lighting booth, a glassed-in room at the back of the theatre, where she listened to the proceedings onstage through a headset. “Go LX 47, stand by Sound 20,” said Charlene to the technician, a tall man with long, wavy black hair and a beard, whose age Stefan couldn’t determine. “Go LX 48, go Sound 20.”

“So do we have any idea how many people are coming tonight?” Stefan asked Charlene.

Charlene flipped a page in her giant binder, a copy of the script, only four times the usual width and filled with coloured annotations and stickers. “Stand by Sound 21. Cross-fade to LX 48, count of five.” She turned to Stefan and said, “Six.”

“Six?”

“Six. We have an audience of six. Go Sound 21.”

“Okay,” said Stefan, standing to leave the booth.

“But two of them are major reviewers.”

“Oh.”

“No pressure.”

“No,” said Stefan. “But let’s not tell the cast.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

~

Stefan sat at the back of the theatre. He looked over the other seats, and could count thirty other heads. They’d all been given free tickets. Actually, he thought, they’d given out a hundred and fifty free tickets. But only thirty people showed. This had never occurred to him, that the show might go completely unnoticed. The house lights dimmed. Stefan clutched his clipboard, though at this point there was little that taking notes could do. Thirty people was nothing in the two-hundred-and-fifty-seat theatre, but the pressure was on: it was a real show. The fate of the play hung on the opinions of two of these thirty people. He hadn’t told the cast, but they all knew that the final dress was the logical time to invite reviewers.

The stage lights rose on the backdrop of row housing, then the two doors at the front of the stage. Chris stepped from the door, and Stefan smiled: he was a solid actor, inspired even. No longer an echo of his father, the character of Heck had become someone new, built from Chris’ physiology and the creative work they’d done in rehearsal together. Stefan liked watching Chris on stage, and felt compelled by the life of the character. Serena seemed a bit plastic next to him, but Chris made her look better than she was.

The first act went well. Stefan split his attention between the actors’ work onstage and the body language of the few audience members. They seemed interested, or at least their heads weren’t nodding off to sleep. One even leaned forward in his seat.

The second act was solid. All the technical elements were in place, and the performances were going well. The lights cross-faded, revealing the factory set.
Oh God,
thought Stefan,
that scene.

Norman-as-Arto entered, looking for his daughter. Stefan had been amazed at the change in Norman during the evening’s performance. His bellowing gave way to subtle nuances of inflection and tone. He’d transformed from a stand-in to a living, breathing person from the story.
He wasn’t trying in rehearsals,
thought Stefan. But this was “the scene”, and the line approached. Serena-Truna found Norman-Arto, collapsed against a piece of machinery. Stefan saw the tension in Serena’s movement.

“Father,” she said, “it’s over. They’re
tearing
...
the
...
city
...
down
,” she enunciated, setting up his response for him.

Norman paused. Or was it the character, Arto? A full two seconds passed as he looked at her, with contempt in his eyes. He spoke slowly, seething with calm gravity. “
Then let them tear the city down
.”

Serena looked at him. She said nothing. She blinked. She looked around, frantically. She smoothed down the creases in her dress, and touched her hair. Her mouth opened, cocked like the hammer of a gun, but her voice fired a blank: “Uh.”

Her hand flew to her face. “I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before. I can’t remem—” She looked into the theatre. “Line!” she called. But Charlene wasn’t in the house, as she had been in rehearsals. She was in a glass booth at the back of the theatre. Norman stood, resolute, as Serena floundered.

Stefan sat up in his seat, then scurried, hunched over, toward the stage. “Tomorrow!” he whispered, as he huddled by the front row. “
Tomorrow!
” But Serena was paralysed.

Charlene finally lowered the stage lights, a professional act of compassion. She brought the house lights up, and the audience sat, confused, for a moment, then turned their heads, looking for an explanation. Stefan stood. “Uh, sorry, we’ve had a bit of a problem, he said. We’ll, um, we’ll start the show again in ten minutes. Thanks for your patience.”

He gestured to the booth, waving for Charlene to go backstage. He jumped up on the stage, joining Norman. But Serena was gone. “Where did she go?” asked Stefan.

“She ran off,” he said, calmly. “I imagine she’ll be running home.”

“You set her up,” said Stefan, roughly guiding Norman offstage.

“She set herself up,” replied Norman. “No one is ever important enough to act like that. I acted at Stratford. I had a television program. Who was she to question my professionalism or my ability?”

“I’ll deal with you later,” said Stefan. The cast gathered backstage, and Charlene ran in from the booth. Stefan addressed them all: “Okay, everyone, gather ‘round. Here’s what we’re going to do. There are ten minutes left in the show. I’m going to stand in as Truna. Maria, do me up.”

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Thom.

“No, I’m not. We have to finish the show. There are reviewers out there.”

“Oh crap,” said Chris. “Okay, come to my dressing room. I’ll get you ready.”

“But I need to be made up as a woman.”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Excuse me, Herr Director, I think I know a little bit more about drag than Maria does.”

They ran to Chris’s dressing room, where Chris smeared and dabbed at Stefan’s face. Maria and Charlene brought in some of Serena’s costumes. “Charlene, go back to the booth,” said Stefan, “and—what?” Charlene was laughing. Stefan looked at himself in the mirror. The heat of the lightbulbs made the makeup feel greasy and heavy. But Chris had succeeded in making him look as female as possible. He was an ugly woman. He squished himself into the loosest of Serena’s costumes, his slight belly bisected by the waistline. He looked at himself in the mirror again. “Oh no. Okay, okay, Charlene, go back to the booth and cue up scene forty-seven again. Everyone, places!”

But when they went back to their places, they saw that half the audience was gone. They resumed the show, with Stefan speaking Serena’s lines from memory. He duplicated her voice perfectly, and tried to mimic her gestures slightly, trying hard not to be camp, but the remaining audience members snickered anyway. Several ducked down and scuttled out of the theatre. Those who stayed laughed harder and harder, and clapped when Chris and Stefan shared a kiss.

The actors ran offstage after the last scene, and Stefan realised he hadn’t devised a curtain-call. He waved the others onstage to take a bow with him. There was no sound cue, so they gathered in silence. By the time they assembled and the lights came back up, they looked out at an empty theatre.

~

“So you get to play the nice girl after all,” said Chris, poking Maria in the ribs.

“But what am I going to do with these?” she asked, squishing her breasts together. Chris’s jaw dropped in earnest, and he had no comeback, which everyone in the rehearsal appreciated as a first, except for the new actress, Tamara, who was assuming Maria’s old part, while Maria moved up to fill Serena’s. The process of re-casting was a hasty one, co-ordinated with the help of the festival’s office, who let them know about an English show that had collapsed before opening. Stefan was determined not to let that happen to his father’s show, and after a brief lunch with the actress, Stefan and Charlene made her an offer. The more he thought about the decision, the happier Stefan was with it. Tamara was tall, and her figure was broad. She was not a typical beauty, but she knew how to be who she was. She turned heads when she walked into a room, and had the confidence and personality to keep them interested. Maria had acted her role as the temptress well, but now, as Truna, Maria could be onstage without acting, which seemed to Stefan like a much better idea. The dynamic of the show was different now, and for the better.

Tuesday night, after their failed public dress rehearsal, the cast, including Maria, went out on the town and got drunk together. They pored over the newspapers the next day, relieved to find they weren’t mentioned, yet aware that they’d missed their chance for advance press. When they staggered back to the hotel, they discovered with no surprise that Serena and her things were gone.

Now, though, they were excited again. Though changes and last-minute rehearsals should have been disruptive, the cast laughed and joked, staying in the theatre for scenes they weren’t in, just to watch. Something was happening, and they were part of it. Tamara was a quick study, and the other actors ran lines with her every spare moment. Norman took a shine to her, even though she’d never heard of him. She respected him, and that was enough. After an hour’s coaching from Stefan, she managed to match her accent with the rest of the cast’s.

By late Thursday afternoon, they’d worked through the whole play. They were ready to open the next night. The only thing left to rehearse was the new curtain-call. The actors stood around Stefan on the stage as he paced back and forth. “Umm,” he said, tapping a pen against the palm of his hand. “Got it!” he said, unintentionally flipping the pen into the wings. He ran into the theatre and rummaged through his bag. He took out the demo disk Rick gave him his last night in Toronto and lurched up to the booth. “Put this on. Track four,” he said to Charlene, then ran back out and down to the stage. A song played through the theatre, slow and melodic. Stefan gestured to the actors, co-ordinating their movements. He held up a
wait
hand, then pointed at them, just as the music burst into a driving anthem. They bowed, and Stefan felt a tingle up his spine.

~

“Stefan,” said Charlene, “have you seen my call-book?”

“Very funny,” he said, smirking at her.

“No, seriously.”

“I didn’t take it. It’s got to be in the booth somewhere.”

“I checked,” she said.

“What about—? Um, the technician.”

“Brian.”

“Yeah, Brian. Maybe he has it.”

“Already asked him.”

Stefan shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Stefan, it’s a half hour until curtains up.” She pointed at the manacle-like watch that circled her large wrist.

“I realise that. Okay, let me check backstage.” He started out of the booth, then turned back. “The operation you had. What was it for?”

“What? I had a mastectomy.”

“Oh,” said Stefan. “Really? Wow. A mastectomy. But you’re okay now?”

“Yeah. Three years, total remission. Perfectly healthy.”

“Alright. I’m glad. Sorry for asking.”

“It’s okay. Go find my call-book.”

“Right.”

Stefan ran backstage. He knocked on the men’s dressing room door. Chris answered the door, naked. “Hi, have you—?” Stefan looked down at Chris’s body. “Oh. Um. Anyway, have you seen Charlene’s call-book?”

“No, God, none of us would dare to touch it. Why?”

“What’s up?” asked Thom, also naked.

“What is this?” asked Stefan.

“It’s a pre-show thing,” said Chris.

“You guys aren’t—?”

“No,” said Thom.

“He likes Maria.”

“Really?” asked Stefan. “That’s handy, because she likes you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So neither of you guys has seen the call-book?”

“No,” said Thom. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” said Stefan, realising he shouldn’t panic his cast. “Everything’s fine. Just get back to your—” he waved a finger at their bodies.

“We’re getting into our characters, layer by layer,” said Chris.

“Right, well, get back to it. Break a leg,” said Stefan, leaving the room. He knew the women didn’t have the book, either, but headed toward their room.

Before he got there, Tamara popped out of the door. “Stefan, have you seen my script?”