Fanciful Friday: Life’s A Play

At the Midnight Grand backstage, chaos reigned as the best actors from Off-Broadway filled themselves with caffeine, nervousness, and a mist of hairspray. On this occasion, the disorder seemed as though it had a mind of its own, pulling apart every bit of order that Linda, the stage manager, had been working to preserve. She frequently wondered what made her keep coming back—not the length of the hours, not the money; rather, it was her addiction to the electric atmosphere just before opening night, the way a rough crew could turn into a living, breathing story. Holding onto her clipboard and headset, Linda was heard muttering to herself, “I went to Juilliard for this?” no less than three times before lunch.

The chorus girl, Trixie, who had a real flair for the dramatic, ran across the dressing room, looking for her missing left tap shoe, believing that the person in the next dressing room with a mental health condition must have taken it. Greg, the man in question, permanently gave up on any more shoe pranks following the Croc incident in ’24. On that famous night, Greg had performed the entire dance number on stage in neon-green Crocs, turning what should have been a romantic scene into a fashion disaster and keeping the Broadway message boards illuminated for weeks. Trixie’s mystery was solved when the shoe was found in Bobo’s mouth—Bobo being the emotional support pug who only obeyed commands from Shakespeare or the enticing smell of pepperoni.

Chase, the leading actor, performed his death scene in the wings with so much energy that he knocked over a rack of sequined costumes and caused a shower of glitter. Rita, the assistant costumer, rushed after a feather boa that had gone astray, holding her staple gun as if it were a lasso and shouted, ‘This is why we can’t have nice things!’ as the boa floated under the men’s dressing room door.

The chaos in the backstage area was just as intense as that in the orchestra pit. The conductor, Mr. Vasquez, was having difficulty rehearsing the overture for Act Two since the clarinetist was arguing with her former oboe player about custody of their turtle, Sheldon. As Sheldon made a bold yet slow dash across the stage, the ensemble spontaneously began singing ‘I Will Survive’. Undaunted, Linda decided to include ‘turtle wrangler’ on her ever-growing to-do list.

Right before the big dance sequence in the play ‘Seizure, The Tap-Shoe Spectacular’, the fog machine malfunctioned and poured a thick mist over the stage, causing the dancers to fall about like pinballs. The director, who was always in favor of interpretive jazz hands, said, “It’s immersive! The audience will feel lost, just like the characters!” Linda quietly wrote under the entries ‘replace fog machine’ and ‘ban glitter, forever’ the note ‘find new director’. When the rehearsals were nearly over, the cast and crew came together for their feedback session, dressed up in feathers and sequins, covered with the sparkle of backstage mayhem. Someone gave Linda a mug that said ‘Keep Calm and Cue the Lights’. She took a drink from it, quietly realized it was spiked, sighed, and prepared for tomorrow, aware that the real show was the backstage chaos on Broadway and that she was its unnoticed heroine.

We star in our own plays: So, sing, cry, dance, laugh, have fun and live intensely before the curtain closes.

Have a great weekend!